{
  "abstract": "The ability to form and sustain interpersonal relationships relies on the capacity to interpret social signals and update understanding of others’ behavior in dynamic contexts. Young adulthood is a critical period for refining these skills. Social learning and social reward responsivity have been implicated in depression, yet findings from social exchange studies remain mixed. Specifically, it remains unclear whether overall depressive symptom severity or specific symptoms such as anhedonia are most relevant to disrupted social decision-making. In a single-session online study, we examined social learning and generosity sensitivity in a UK population sample of young adults (18–24 years; n=553). Participants completed the Social Learning–Generosity (SL-Gen) task, a multi-round trust game paradigm designed to probe feedback-driven updating and behavioral adaptation to structured generosity conditions, alongside questionnaire measures of depression (PHQ-9) and social anhedonia (ACIPS). Depressive symptom severity was minimally associated with task performance; in contrast, greater social anhedonia and higher PHQ-9 anhedonia item scores were associated with differences in both evaluative updating and investment behavior. Specifically, individuals with greater social anhedonia showed lower initial investments, lower investments in higher generosity conditions, and smaller reductions in generosity ratings following unfair (loss-condition) interactions. Anhedonia was also associated with slightly flatter investment slopes in certain conditions. These findings suggest that anhedonia, rather than global depressive symptom severity, is linked to reduced sensitivity to negative social feedback. Task-based social learning measures may therefore help identify mechanistic subgroups within depression characterized by blunted social reward processing which may have utility for pinpointing treatment targets.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 8,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Brennan Delattre"
    },
    {
      "name": "Juliet Denise Griffin"
    },
    {
      "name": "Erdem Pulcu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Finley Watton"
    },
    {
      "name": "Amy Gillespie"
    },
    {
      "name": "Joshua Eusty Jonathan Buckman"
    },
    {
      "name": "Susannah Murphy"
    },
    {
      "name": "Catherine Harmer"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/66xd0c8bywkh0.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.31234/osf.io/94ftd_v2",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "66xd0c8bywkh0",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/94ftd_v2/",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "bepress",
      "Assessment"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Behavioral Economics"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Clinical Decision Making"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Clinical Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Cognitive Neuroscience"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Cognitive Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Consumer Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Depressive Disorders"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Developmental Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Early Adulthood"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Impression Formation"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Interpersonal Relationships"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Judgment and Decision Making"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Learning"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Neuroscience"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social Cognition"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social Development"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social Influence"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social Well-being"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social and Behavioral Sciences"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social and Personality Psychology"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://osf.io/94ftd/download",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-06",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/66xd0c8bywkh0.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:25:48Z",
      "native_id": "94ftd",
      "source": "osf",
      "url": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/94ftd_v2/"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "bepress:Cognitive Neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    },
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "bepress:Clinical Psychology",
      "subfield": "psychiatry"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Social anhedonia predicts behavioral differences in young people with and without depression during social exchange",
  "title_text": "Social anhedonia predicts behavioral differences in young people with and without depression during social exchange",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:25:48Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/66xd0c8bywkh0",
  "venue": "PsyArXiv",
  "versions": []
}