Do patients with different psychiatric disorders show altered social decision-making? A systematic review of ultimatum game experiments in clinical populations.

BACKGROUND: Impairments in social functioning are a common feature of psychiatric disorders. Game paradigms pose a unique way for studying how people make decisions in interpersonal contexts. In the last decade, researchers have started to use these paradigms to study social decision-making in patients with psychiatric disorders.

PURPOSE: The aim of this systematic literature review is to summarise the currently available evidence on the behaviour of patients with psychiatric disorders in the commonly used Ultimatum Game (UG).

METHOD: A systematic literature search including MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PSYNDEXplus Tests, PSYNDEXPLUS Literature, EBM Reviews-Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase and PASCAL was performed via the Ovid interface.

RESULTS: We found evidence for alterations in UG behaviour for patients with frontotemporal dementia, schizophrenia, affective disorders, alcohol, cocaine, heroin and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine consumption, alcohol dependence, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, autism, Tourette syndrome and oppositional defiant disorder.

CONCLUSION: There is some evidence that different psychiatric disorders might go along with alterations in social decision-making. However, in general, data are currently limited and studies are hard to compare due to differences in methodologies.