Introduction: Group memberships play an important role in promoting psychological well-being and supporting social functioning. However, studies suggest that individuals with social anhedonia, a characteristic defined by limited pleasure from social bonds, may show abnormalities in their desire to cultivate positive feelings, such as belongingness, from social groups. Still, these abnormalities have not been studied in the context of intergroup processes, leaving the relation between social anhedonia and subjective evaluations of group memberships unclear. Methods: Across three studies (Ns = 124-659), we examined associations between social anhedonia and affective and cognitive attitudes about different types of ingroups and outgroups using self-report and behavioral measures. Results: Taken together, results indicate that social anhedonia is associated with less positive and more negative feelings and beliefs about most ingroups and outgroups from everyday life, as well as negatively biased stereotyping of many prominent social groups. At the same time, individuals with either extremely high or low levels of social anhedonia did not report significantly different intergroup attitudes when group memberships were experimentally manipulated in a minimal group setting. Discussion: Overall, these findings suggest that social anhedonia is associated with less positive and more negative subjective evaluations of long-established, real-world ingroups, but not of a newly formed ingroup that requires little motivation or social engagement to maintain group membership. Aberrant feelings and attitudes toward one's ingroups are consistent with the theory that social anhedonia is related to anomalies in the need to belong within social groups from everyday life and could inform psychosocial interventions for related psychopathologies.

Attention to affect is theoretically a precursor to one's ideal affect (i.e., preference for feeling low‐ and high‐arousal positive and negative affect) and emotion regulation (ER). In schizotypy, there have been mixed findings regarding abnormalities in attention to affect. At the same time, little is known about ideal affect in schizotypy or whether differences in ideal affect or ER difficulties in schizotypy are driven by attention to affect. Thus, this study aimed to identify shared and unique abnormalities in attention to affect, ideal affect, and ER difficulties in schizotypy, and to test whether attention to affect underlies differences in ideal affect and ER difficulties. Using groups of individuals with either extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh; n = 181), extreme levels of perceptual aberrations/magical ideation (PerMag; n = 105), or individuals low on both (i.e., controls; n = 531), we tested group differences in attention to affect, ideal affect, and ER difficulties. Our findings suggest both shared and unique affective abnormalities; compared to controls, the SocAnh group paid the least attention to positive affect. Only PerMag had heightened attention to negative affect compared to controls. Additionally, we found unique abnormalities relating to ideal affect but mostly shared difficulties in ER in schizotypy. Abnormalities in ideal affect and ER remain largely consistent after accounting for attention to affect for PerMag, suggesting that attention to affect is not the primary mechanism driving these abnormalities. However, we found evidence that attention to affect underlies some SocAnh–control group differences in ideal affect and ER difficulties. Our work helps to clarify prior work and contributes to the understanding of shared and unique affective abnormalities in schizotypy. Future research may consider longitudinal approaches to test causal mechanisms of affective abnormalities in schizotypy.