Diminished Positive Affect in Social Anhedonia: Linking Anticipation and Experience During Dyadic Interaction

In this preregistered study, we tested competing hypotheses on how social anhedonia is related to the affective response to social interaction: i) diminished forecasting and ii) experience of positive affect, iii) increased forecasting and iv) experience of negative affect. For this, we obtained trait-level measures of social anhedonia and, as covariates, of social anxiety and suspiciousness from N = 100 young adults who engaged in k = 50 dyadic affiliative interactions. We assessed affective forecasting on a day before the interaction and the affective experience during the interaction with five intermittent ratings and via ratings obtained from participants watching replays of their interaction. Controlling for social anxiety and suspiciousness, results showed that social anhedonia was related to diminished positive, not increased negative affect, both in anticipation of and during the social interaction. Negative affect was specifically related to social anxiety. We also found an indirect effect of social anhedonia via diminished experience of positive affect on proxies of social motivation and volition. Exploratory analyses suggested an unexpected comforting effect of social anhedonia on interaction partners’ affect that warrants further inquiry. Limitations include a rather WEIRD sample and that the replay ratings were likely not a valid self-assessment of experienced affect. We conclude that social anhedonia is specifically related to diminished positive affect for social interactions whereas increased negative affect is better explained by co-present social anxiety. Future research should investigate whether these distinct affective trajectories trace back to a common etiological factor.