Social anhedonia predicts behavioral differences in young people with and without depression during social exchange
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.
Related
- Abstract representation in the hippocampus predicts spontaneously adopted structure-based behavioral strategy
- Resting Heart Rate Predicts Depression and Cognition Early after Ischemic Stroke: A Pilot Study
- Respiration and individual differences shape behavioral and inter-brain synchronization
- Idiosyncratic Eye‐Movement Patterns to Faces Are Associated With Differences in Neural Processing: Evidence From Behavioral and Event‐Related Potential Responses
- Unpredictable chronic stress produces a mixed depression/anxiety behavioral profile in zebrafish
BibTeX
@misc{delattre2026social,
title = {{Social anhedonia predicts behavioral differences in young people with and without depression during social exchange}},
author = {Brennan Delattre and Juliet Denise Griffin and Erdem Pulcu and Finley Watton and Amy Gillespie and Joshua Eusty Jonathan Buckman and Susannah Murphy and Catherine Harmer},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/94ftd_v2},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/94ftd_v2/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Social anhedonia predicts behavioral differences in young people with and without depression during social exchange
AU - Brennan Delattre
AU - Juliet Denise Griffin
AU - Erdem Pulcu
AU - Finley Watton
AU - Amy Gillespie
AU - Joshua Eusty Jonathan Buckman
AU - Susannah Murphy
AU - Catherine Harmer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/06
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/94ftd_v2
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/94ftd_v2/
AB - 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.
ER -