Wanting and liking: the effects of depressive symptoms and anhedonia on hedonic responses to a laboratory task and in everyday life
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Kathleen H. Maloney (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Kari Eddington
Abstract: Few studies have examined the presence or impact of anhedonia in the hedonic experiences of daily life in people with depression, with the majority of studies on anhedonia and depression being single time-point questionnaire studies or laboratory-based experimental studies. This study combined a sensory hedonic response task with daily diary methodology in order to examine the link between depressive symptoms and hedonic response of wanting and liking in both a laboratory setting and in everyday life. Ninety undergraduates participated in a 3-part study, which took place over the course of 10 days. Students completed questionnaires online, followed by an in-lab tasting task, in which they tasted several samples of chocolate and bland crackers, after which they completed nightly surveys for a total of seven days, reporting on their experiences of seemingly pleasant things that day, and predicting how they would feel the next day about similar events. Using regression and structural equation modeling, we examined whether depressive symptoms predicted how much students would anticipate their hedonic response to typically pleasant events. We then examined the difference between how much they anticipated feeling at those events, and how much they actually felt during those events, looking for a predictive effect of depression on the gap between anticipation and experience. Only in the daily diary task did depression symptoms predict how much a person would anticipate pleasant events the next day, such that those with higher depression anticipated enjoying themselves less that those with fewer depression symptoms.
Wanting and liking: the effects of depressive symptoms and anhedonia on hedonic responses to a laboratory task and in everyday life
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Created on 5/1/2019
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2019
- Keywords
- Anhedonia, Anticipatory, Consummatory, Daily diary, Depression, Laboratory task
- Subjects
- Anhedonia
- Depression, Mental