Social Functioning in Anhedonics: A Daily Diary Study
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Corey J. Wernette (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Kari Eddington
Abstract: Anhedonia is a symptom of both schizophrenia and depression and is a term to describe the loss of pleasure in once enjoyable activities, such as social interaction or playing a sport. In this study we examined how social anhedonia relates not only to in person communication, but also phone call communication, text messaging communication, and internet communication. The landscape of long-distance communication is evolving fast, the use of smart-phones, the internet, and now virtual reality are more and more being utilized to stay in contact with others and the research needs to reflect these changes in social dynamics. In order to understand how social anhedonia is related to these newer modes of communication we investigated how our undergraduate sample communicated day to day using a daily diary approach. Over a two week period we found that social anhedonia has a significantly negative correlation with the number of phone call communications and the number of text messaging communication a person has in addition to the number of in person communications, but not with the number of internet communications. Future research would benefit from creating better measures of internet communication. While the current study was restricted to archival data, being able to gauge how often and how enjoyable these internet conversations are will reveal many new ideas on solitude in anhedonia and will hold greater implications for how depression is treated in the 21st century and beyond.
Social Functioning in Anhedonics: A Daily Diary Study
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Created on 5/10/2018
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Honors Project
- Language: English
- Date: 2018
- Keywords
- anhedonia, social media, internet communication, ESM