Affective forecasting and accuracy in social anhedonia: Predicted and experienced emotion for a social interaction

Objective: Previous research suggests people with social anhedonia (SocAnh) exhibit deficits in anticipated pleasure for social stimuli relative to controls. However, previous research has relied on hypothetical social stimuli and has focused on anticipated pleasure without examining negative affect.

Method: Participants were informed that they would complete an "enjoyable" sharing task with a peer and were asked to forecast positive and negative affect during the interaction. After the interaction, participants reported their experienced emotions.

Results: We found SocAnh and controls anticipated and experienced similar levels of positive affect and that both groups underpredicted positive affect. The SocAnh group anticipated and experienced more negative affect than controls and was more accurate in forecasting negative affect.

Conclusion: This is the first study to show that SocAnh is associated with the heightened anticipation of negative affect and that experiencing heightened negative affect during social interactions could drive reduced motivation and desire to engage in future social interaction.