Examining Personality, Interpersonal, and Symptom Correlates of Social Anhedonia in Early Adolescent Males and Females

Abstract

Social anhedonia, a tendency toward experiencing social stimuli as less positive or pleasurable, is associated with maladaptive personality traits, poor interpersonal functioning, and psychopathology, and is typically elevated in males compared with females. However, the correlates of social anhedonia in youth have not been well defined. In this study, 275 young adolescents from a community sample completed measures of social anhedonia, personality, interpersonal functioning, and symptoms; mothers also completed personality and symptom measures. Social anhedonia was associated with low positive emotionality and, to a lesser extent, high disinhibition and negative emotionality. Social anhedonia was also correlated with several markers of poor interpersonal functioning and a wide range of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Interactions between sex variables indicated that associations were particularly strong in males. Overall, findings suggest that social anhedonia is an important construct to explore in early adolescence, with meaningful associations with psychosocial functioning, especially among males.

Lonely but not alone: Loneliness and social positive valence sensitivity in emerging adults' everyday lives

“…Additionally, even if both social experiences and social PVS sensitivity are both associated with loneliness, it remains unclear whether both of these factors may be better explained by domain-general PVS sensitivity. Most individual difference studies that focus on PVS functioning and loneliness use measures of PVS sensitivity within the social domain, such as measures of social anhedonia (Goldstein et al, 2021;Gooding et al, 2015). This is ostensibly a sensible approach, as loneliness arises in response to (a lack of) interpersonally-oriented experiences (Joiner et al, 2002) and responsiveness to social incentives is dissociable from responsiveness to other incentives, such as monetary or hedonic ones (Banica et al, 2022;Case et al, 2022;Distefano et al, 2018).…”