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.
Keywords: Social cognition; neuroeconomics; psychiatric disorders; social decision-making.