ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Forensic and Legal Psychology
Impact of intelligence on social cognition in mentally disordered offenders: preliminary evidence in schizophrenia and personality disorders
Provisionally accepted
Kyriakos IOANNIDIS1
Lena MAGNENAT1
Francois R HERRMANN1,2Laila ESPINOSA1
Panteleimon Giannakopoulos2
Kerstin Weber1,2*- 1Hopitaux Universitaires Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland
- 2University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
ABSTRACT Introduction: Social cognition (SC) allows individuals to perceive, interpret, and react to intentions and behaviors of others. Forensic psychiatry patients show impaired SC, leading to emergence of violent behaviors. This impairment may differ according to patients' intelligence quotient and psychiatric diagnosis (schizophrenia spectrum versus personality disorders). Aims: The study investigated emotional SC and cognitive SC in male forensic inpatients, exploring demographic, criminological and clinical determinants. Methods: We retrospectively retrieved and analyzed data in a preliminary sample of 75 offenders following court-ordered psychiatric treatment in Switzerland. Emotional SC was assessed using a facial emotions' recognition task and cognitive SC was assessed with theory of mind comics picture stories. Multiple logistic regression models were applied to identify protective and risk factors of cognitive SC and emotional SC. Results: 39.2% of the offenders presented cognitive SC and 25.3% emotional SC impairment. Higher intelligence quotient was the unique 10-fold protective factor for cognitive SC, independently of psychiatric diagnoses and criminal history. In contrast, for emotional SC, average intelligence and PD disorder acted as protective factors compared to schizophrenia and intellectual deficiency, while foreign nationality acted as risk factor. Notably, neither recidivism nor the violent or multiple nature of crimes were related to SC. Discussion: Clinicians should consider patients' level of intelligence and include differential emotional and cognitive SC assessments, when referring mentally disordered offenders for SC training to improve their prosocial skills.
Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Forensic Psychiatry, offenders, social cognition, Theory of Mind
Received: 23 Oct 2025; Accepted: 04 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 IOANNIDIS, MAGNENAT, HERRMANN, ESPINOSA, Giannakopoulos and Weber. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kerstin Weber
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.