Emotional reactivity and prosocial behaviour in response to witnessing social exclusion in adolescents with eating disorders and healthy controls.

Background: Prosocial behaviour can promote positive social interactions and it is a key skill in adolescence. People with emotional problems or psychiatric disorders, such as people with eating disorders might have impairments in prosocial behaviour, due to broader documented difficulties in underlying processes (e.g., mentalizing).

Methods: The aim of this study was to examine prosocial behaviour in adolescents with eating disorders compared to healthy controls, using a computerised behavioural task. Adolescents (N = 123) including patients with eating disorders (n = 61) and healthy adolescents (n = 62) played a four-player computerised Prosocial Cyberball Game with three pre-programmed avatar players. During the task, participants witnessed the exclusion of one of the players, and subsequently had the opportunity to compensate for this by throwing the ball more often to the excluded player. Throughout the game, participants rated the level of negative emotion in themselves and in the excluded player.

Results: Patients made significantly fewer ball tosses towards the excluded player during the compensation round compared to healthy controls (large effect size). Patients reported a significantly smaller increase in negative emotion after witnessing the exclusion and a significantly smaller decrease in negative emotion following the compensation round (large effect sizes). Patients also estimated a smaller decrease in negative emotion in the excluded player following the compensation round (medium effect size). There were no significant associations between these outcomes and eating disorder psychopathology in patients.

Conclusions: Compared to healthy adolescents, adolescent patients with eating disorders demonstrated less prosocial compensatory behaviour towards a computerised victim of social exclusion. In addition, they reported flatter negative emotion in themselves in response to witnessing and compensating for exclusion, and in the excluded player following compensation. If these findings are replicated, interventions to target these difficulties might contribute to improvements in social functioning in this patient group.