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.

Keywords

affect/emotions peer relationships parent–adolescent relationships personality psychopathology measurement/validation

Humans have strong affiliative tendencies (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). However, the need to connect with others and the enjoyment of interpersonal experiences varies across individuals. The lower end of this spectrum of individual differences is often termed “social anhedonia,” referring to a lack of positive emotion and enjoyment in response to social stimuli (Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1976; Gooding & Pflum, 2014a).

Social anhedonia research has increased substantially over the past decade. A search for social anhedonia in PsycINFO returned 159 results between 2000 and 2009. That number jumped to 474 between 2010 and 2019 which was nearly a threefold increase. Growth of this area of research is likely to continue as the construct of social anhedonia is relevant to the positive valence and social processing sections of the Research Domain Criteria Matrix, which specifically includes measures of social anhedonia (National Institute of Mental Health, 2020). Unfortunately, the majority of social anhedonia research has focused on adults, despite the fact that social anhedonia may be a particularly important construct to study in adolescence. For instance, social inclusion and peer interactions become increasingly salient in adolescence, and lay the foundation for adult relationships and social functioning (Barkus & Badcock, 2019; La Greca & Harrison, 2005). The adolescent period is marked by changes in self-concept, social roles, and the introduction of novel social pressures, all occurring during a period of significant physical and neural changes (Casey, Getz, & Galvan, 2008; Steinberg & Morris, 2001). Social anhedonia may be especially relevant, given the shifts that occur in the nature, quality, and relative importance of relationships with parents and peers (Smetana, Campione-Barr, & Metzger, 2006). In addition, the period spanning late childhood through middle adolescence may be the developmental period during which the largest increase in social anhedonia is observed and may set the trajectory for social anhedonia through adulthood (Dodell-Feder, & Germine, 2018). Perhaps the most pressing reason to examine social anhedonia in early adolescence is that several of the disorders that are characterized by higher levels of social anhedonia, such as depression and schizophrenia, are increasingly likely to develop during, and shortly after, adolescence (Kessler et al., 2005; Klein, Goldstein, & Finsaas, 2017). Whereas there has been considerable research on related social constructs such as behavioral inhibition and social withdrawal in youth (e.g., Coplan & Armer, 2007; Pérez-Edgar & Fox, 2018), there is a relative paucity of work on social anhedonia and its correlates in adolescents. Overall, a better understanding of social anhedonia in adolescence is needed and may be of benefit to several fields of study.

To fully appreciate the need to study social anhedonia, it is important to note that while social anhedonia is related to other traits such as shyness, introversion, social anxiety, and social disinterest, it is also distinguishable from these constructs (Silvia & Kwapil, 2011). Social anhedonia reflects a lack of enjoyment of interpersonal contact and a preference for being alone. Whereas social anxiety and shyness are characterized by avoidance to reduce negative emotions related to fear of embarrassment or rejection, socially anxious and shy individuals typically desire and enjoy interpersonal relationships (Brown, Silvia, Myin-Germeys, & Kwapil, 2007; Kwapil et al., 2009). Moreover, males and females exhibit similar levels of shyness, whereas males tend to exhibit higher levels of social anhedonia than females (Doey, Coplan, & Kingsbury, 2014; Gooding & Pflum, 2014b; Gooding, Winston, Pflum, & Burgin, 2015). Introversion is a broad construct that can include social anhedonia along with other characteristics, such as unassertiveness, low positive affect, and low social dominance (Watson, Nus, & Wu, 2019; Watson, Stanton, Khoo, Ellickson-Larew, & Stasik-O’Brien, 2019). In contrast, social anhedonia is a much narrower construct. Furthermore, factor analytic work has shown that introversion and social anhedonia reflect different latent factors (Martin, Cicero, Bailey, Karcher, & Kerns, 2015). In addition, social anhedonia is related to, but distinct from, other forms of anhedonia, such as physical anhedonia (Chapman et al., 1976; Gooding, Pflum, Fonseca-Pedero, & Paino, 2016; Langvik & Borgen Austad, 2019).

Social anhedonia may be most similar to social disinterest (Coplan & Armer, 2007; Coplan, Prakash, O’Neil, & Armer, 2004). Indeed, many of those with social anhedonia may prefer solitude. However, social anhedonia refers specifically to a lack of pleasure from social contact, an internal experience, whereas social disinterest is principally concerned with one’s preferences for solitude and is often conceptualized and assessed from the perspective of an external observer. Social disinterest may also be relatively benign (Coplan, Girardi, Findlay, & Frohlick, 2007), whereas social anhedonia appears maladaptive (Barkus & Badcock, 2019). Nevertheless, the two may be connected to one another as being socially disinterested may result from not obtaining pleasure from interacting with others. Alternatively, social disinterest may emerge first, as the tendency to enjoy solitary activities at an early age may limit one from developing relationships and reduce the opportunity for social interaction to be positively reinforced. Overall, research suggests that social anhedonia not only overlaps with a number of other individual differences constructs, but also has a distinct and more specific meaning. Next, we discuss the three primary domains most commonly examined as correlates of social anhedonia in adults.

Correlates of Social Anhedonia

Research in adults has found that social anhedonia is correlated to varying degrees with a variety of personality traits. It is strongly associated with reduced positive emotionality, whereas its relationship with negative emotionality is weaker and less consistent (e.g., J. J. Blanchard, Collins, Aghevli, Leung, & Cohen, 2009; Gooding, Davidson, Putnam, & Tallent, 2002; Leung, Couture, Blanchard, Lin, & Llerena, 2010; Olino, Horton, & Versella, 2016). When considering results from studies using Big Three or Big Five personality measures, social anhedonia correlates positively with neuroticism and negatively with extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Gooding, Padrutt, & Pflum, 2017; Olino et al., 2016; Ross, Lutz, & Bailley, 2002). A recent study of narrower facets of personality found that social anhedonia is negatively related to prosocial orientation, orderliness, goal striving, dependability, sociability, and activity (Gooding et al., 2017). Of various narrow facets, social anhedonia is most comparable to low social closeness (i.e., the propensity to engage with others, value and enjoy relationships, and be warm and affectionate) and both traits have a similar pattern of correlations within the personality hierarchy (Olino et al., 2016).

As described above, adolescence coincides with a realignment of interpersonal relationships. Not surprisingly, social anhedonia is associated with problematic interpersonal functioning. Despite being characterized by a preference for solitude, those higher in social anhedonia report feeling lonely (Barkus & Badcock, 2019 ; Robustelli, Newberry, Whisman, & Mittal, 2017). They also report fewer interpersonal relationships, less perceived social support, are less likely to be engaged in romantic relationships, and when in relationships they report less positive regard or care for their partner (Assaad & Lemay, 2018; Brown et al., 2007; Robustelli et al., 2017).

Social anhedonia is also relevant for understanding psychopathology as it is a common feature of a variety of psychiatric disorders. The bulk of research has focused on schizophrenia spectrum disorders and has shown that social anhedonia is both an important characteristic and a risk factor (e.g., J. L. Blanchard, Horan, & Brown, 2001; Gooding, Tallent, & Matts, 2005, 2007; Kwapil, 1998). In addition, studies have reported that social anhedonia is elevated in patients with depression (Atherton, Nevels, & Moore, 2015; Pelizza & Ferrari, 2009) and correlated with depression symptoms in nonclinical samples (Olino et al., 2016). Moreover, social anhedonia has been associated with autism spectrum disorders (Berthoz, Lalanne, Crane, & Hill, 2013; Gadow & Garman, 2018) and eating disorders (Tchanturia et al., 2012). Thus, social anhedonia may be viewed as a transdiagnostic characteristic (Barkus & Badcock, 2019). A relevant consideration here is that the social anhedonia may appear transdiagnostic because many of these conditions involve changes to positive affect. However, social anhedonia may still exhibit some specificity. For instance, the tripartite model of internalizing disorders would suggest that depression, but not anxiety, would be associated with social anxiety as anxiety is not hypothesized to be associated with reduced positive affect (Clark & Watson, 1991).

In summary, social anhedonia is distinguishable from related constructs and is relevant for a variety of domains of adaptive functioning. As mentioned above, the majority of research examining the correlates of social anhedonia has focused on adults, despite the fact that social relationships are particularly relevant to adolescence and that social anhedonia-linked psychopathology often develops during or shortly after adolescence. Therefore, there is a need to broadly characterize social anhedonia in adolescent samples. In the current study, we examined associations of social anhedonia with a wide range of personality traits, interpersonal variables, and symptom dimensions in a community sample of 12-year-olds. Based on the adult literature, we expected social anhedonia to correlate with positive emotionality, but have weaker or nonsignificant associations with negative emotionality. We also hypothesized that social anhedonia would be related to greater loneliness, poorer quality of relationships with friends and family, and lower perceived social support. As social anhedonia appears to be transdiagnostic, we expected to find significant relationships with a variety of symptom domains, especially depressive symptoms. A recent study using the same sample examined early childhood predictors of adolescent social anhedonia and found that levels of social anhedonia were higher in males than females, and that sex moderated the effects of early childhood temperament on later social anhedonia (Mumper, Finsaas, Goldstein, Gooding, & Klein, 2020). As a result, we conducted additional analyses examining whether sex moderated the relationships between social anhedonia and concurrent traits, interpersonal functioning, and symptoms.

Method

The sample was drawn from the Stony Brook Temperament Study (for details see, Klein & Finsaas, 2017), a longitudinal investigation of early childhood temperament and the development of psychopathology. Families with 3-year-old children (N = 559) were recruited from the community using commercial mailing lists. An additional 50 children were recruited at the age of 6 years to increase the sample’s diversity. Youth were included as long as they had at least one participating English-speaking biological parent and did not have significant medical or developmental disabilities. Data reported in this study are drawn from a single follow-up assessment conducted when the children were approximately 12 years old (i.e., analyses are cross-sectional and do not imply prediction). All of the data for the present study were collected with questionnaire-based measures, many of which were completed by both the child and their mother. We indicate who completed each measure in the following section.

A total of 485 children provided at least some data at the age 12 assessment wave (of a possible N = 609). The Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale–Adolescent Version (ACIPS-A) was introduced midway through the age 12 wave, such that social anhedonia was assessed in 276 participants. One participant was removed as the individual’s response pattern indicated that they did not understand the instructions (e.g., using only the most extreme answer choices despite reverse coded items), leaving a final sample of 275. We examined attrition and subsample differences by comparing those who provided no data at the age 12 assessment (e.g., lost to attrition, N = 124), those who provided some data, but were either excluded (N = 1) or did not have the opportunity to complete the ACIPS-A (N = 209), and those who were included in the final sample (N = 275). We found that these three groups did not differ on the child’s biological sex (χ² = 4.81, p = .09) but did differ on racial/ethnic minority status (χ² = 19.68, p < .001). Specifically, participants included in the final analytic sample had a higher proportion of ethnic/racial minorities (N = 75, 27.3%) compared with those who participated at the age of 12 years, but did not complete the ACIPS (N = 23, 11.0%) or those who did not participate at the age 12 assessment (N = 25, 20.2%). In the final analytic sample, participants were 12.47 years of age on average (SD = 0.44), were relatively balanced for sex (50.2% male), and were mostly non-Hispanic Caucasian (74.3%). At the time of the age 12 wave, participant’s parents were mostly married or living together (77.9%) and, in a minority of households, both parents had a college degree (35.2%).

Measures

Social anhedonia

The ACIPS-A (Gooding & Pflum, 2014a, 2014b; Gooding et al., 2016) is a 17-item self-report measure of one’s enjoyment of interpersonal interactions. Items are rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale with response options ranging from 4 (totally true for me) to 1 (totally false for me). One item is reverse scored. To ease interpretation, we reverse scored the total, such that higher scores indicated greater social anhedonia. Internal consistency was excellent with an alpha of .92. This version of the ACIPS has been validated for use in younger adolescents (Gooding et al., 2016). The ACIPS was completed by the child.

Personality

The General Temperament Survey–Youth version (GTS; Clark & Watson, 1990) is a 90-item measure of the Big Three trait domains: positive temperament (27 items), negative temperament (28 items), and disinhibition (35 items). Items are rated as True-False. For the child’s self-report, alphas were .80, .90, and .80, for the positive temperament, negative temperament, and disinhibition scales, respectively. For mothers’ reports, alphas were .85, .88, and .88, for the positive temperament, negative temperament, and disinhibition scales, respectively. Youth’s and mother’s reports were reasonably well correlated at .35, .33, and .50, for the positive, negative, and disinhibition scales, respectively. Youth’s and mothers’ scales were z scored and averaged to create composite scores for positive temperament, negative temperament, and disinhibition.

Interpersonal functioning

Interpersonal functioning was assessed with two measures. The Network Relationships Inventory–Relationship Quality Version (NRI-RQV; Buhrmester & Furman, 2008) is a self-report measure in which respondents characterize the degree of closeness and discord in relationships with each parent, a best friend, and a romantic partner. Due to relatively few participants having romantic partners, we do not report these items. Each scale consists of three items rated on a 5-point scale from 1 (never or hardly at all) to 5 (always or extremely). We combined the satisfaction with the relationship and communicating approval of the participant scales to yield relationship closeness composites. The closeness composites had alphas of .87, .91, and .85 for mother, father, and best friend, respectively. The criticism of the participant and relationship conflict scales was combined to form discord composites for mother and father. For best friends, we also obtained scores on the peer pressure and peer exclusion subscales and combined them with the conflict and criticism scales to create a best friend discord composite. The discord composites had internal consistencies of .84, .91, and .86 for mother, father, and best friend, respectively. For closeness, the correlation between the mother and father scales was .52, the mother and friend scales was .41, and the father and friend scales was .29. For discord, the correlation between the mother and father scales was .54, mother and friend was .40, and father and friend was .38. We created two overall composites for closeness and discord by taking a z score of the mother, father, and best friend scales and then averaging across the z scores. The NRI was completed by the child only.

An abbreviated version of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (Roberts, Lewinsohn, & Seeley, 1993) assessed feelings of social isolation and lack of companionship. It consists of four items rated on a 4-point scale, ranging from 0 (never) to 3 (often); alpha was .84. The Loneliness scale was completed by the child only.

Psychopathology

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Ruffle, 2000) is a 113-item, parent-report measure of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in the past 6 months and was completed by mothers only. Items are rated on a 3-point scale, ranging from 0 (not true) to 2 (very true or often true). The CBCL includes higher order internalizing (Cronbach’s α = .87) and externalizing scales (α = .88), and lower order anxious-depressed (α = .80), withdrawn-depressed (α = .78), somatic complaints (α = .68), social problems (α = .74), thought problems (α = .58), attention problems (α = .86), rule-breaking behavior (α = .66), and aggressive behavior scales (α = .86).

The Child Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1992) is a 28-item self-report measure of depressive symptoms occurring within the past 2 weeks. Adolescents completed the CDI by selecting one of three short phrases, indicating that a symptom was absent, somewhat present, or present. Alpha was .83 for the child-reported CDI.

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED; Birmaher et al., 1997) is a 41-item measure of anxiety symptoms completed by the adolescents. The SCARED is rated on a 3-point scale ranging from 0 (not true or hardly ever true) to 2 (very true or often true). Alpha was .90 for child-reported SCARED.

Data Analytic Plan

We first examined bivariate associations among social anhedonia, age, sex, personality traits, interpersonal functioning, and symptoms. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine unique correlates of social anhedonia with a separate regression model for each domain (e.g., one for personality, another for interpersonal functioning, and a third for symptoms). In these regressions, we use temperament, social functioning, and symptoms as “predictors” (i.e., independent variables), but this does not mean that these variables are causal or temporal predictors of social anhedonia as our study uses a correlational, cross-sectional design. Any variables that exhibited significant bivariate associations were included within their domain-specific regression (the one exception was for the broad CBCL internalizing and externalizing scales as these scales tap the same items as those in the lower order symptom scales). Next, we ran a regression model in which we selected all of the variables that had significant associations in the domain-level regression models (e.g., if positive temperament was associated with social anhedonia after controlling for other temperament variables, it was included in this cross-domain regression model).

Finally, we explored whether sex moderated the associations of social anhedonia with each significant correlate in the personality, social functioning, and psychopathology domains using multiple regression. Sex was mean-centered and each correlate was z scored prior to creating cross-product terms and social anhedonia was centered, such that the intercept of the equation reflects the sample average on social anhedonia. Significant interactions were probed by examining separate simple slopes for males and females. Minimum and maximum values for the y-axis representing social anhedonia were fixed to the same scale across interactions and the range of values on the x-axis was set at +1 to −1 SD from the mean of the “predictor” variable. Analyses were conducted using SPSS Version 26 (IBM).

Results

Bivariate Correlations

Descriptive statistics and bivariate associations for social anhedonia, sex, age, personality, interpersonal functioning, and symptoms are shown in Table 1. As can be seen in Table 1, males exhibited higher levels of social anhedonia than females. Using a mother- and child-composite of the GTS, we found that social anhedonia was negatively associated with positive temperament, but positively associated with negative temperament and disinhibition.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Associations of Major Study Variables.

	N	$\bar{X}$	SD	Correlation with social anhedonia(ACIPS-A)	p value
Social anhedonia	275	24.34	7.40	—	—
Age	275	12.47	0.44	−.07	.25
Sex (F = 1, M = 0)	275	50.2%		−.31***	<.001
Temperament
GTS (combined report)	275
Positive temperament		−0.01	0.82	−.40***	<.001
Negative temperament		0.01	0.82	.14*	.02
Disinhibition		0.00	0.87	.18***	.003
Interpersonal functioning measures (youth report)
NRI closeness	256	0.00	0.78	−.45***	<.001
NRI discord	256	0.00	0.81	.27**	<.001
UCLA Loneliness Scale	255	1.97	2.29	.26***	<.001
Symptoms
CBCL (mother report)	274
Internalizing		3.75	5.03	.16**	.006
Externalizing		3.47	4.69	.09	.16
Anxious depression		1.80	2.67	.09	.15
Withdrawn depression		1.16	1.91	.22***	<.001
Somatic complaints		0.80	1.56	.12	.06
Social problems		1.07	1.72	.14*	.02
Thought problems		1.03	1.50	.19***	.001
Attention problems		2.14	3.16	.23***	<.001
Rule-breaking behavior		1.03	1.66	.05	.45
Aggressive behavior		2.44	3.37	.10	.11
CDI (youth report)	258	5.27	5.06	.37***	<.001
SCARED (youth report)	275	17.75	10.55	.07	.26

Note. ACIPS-A = Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale–Adolescent Version; GTS = General Temperament Survey; NRI = Network Relationships Inventory; UCLA = University of California, Los Angeles; CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist; CDI = Child Depression Inventory; SCARED = Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders.

p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

With regard to interpersonal functioning, social anhedonia was negatively associated with child-reported relationship closeness, but was positively associated with relationship discord. In addition, social anhedonia was positively associated with child-reported loneliness.

We also found that social anhedonia was positively associated with the maternal-reported CBCL internalizing, withdrawn depression, social problems, thought problems, and attention problem scales. Using youth report on the CDI, we found that social anhedonia was positively associated with depressive symptoms.

Independent Within-Domain and Across-Domain Effects on Social Anhedonia

We next conducted a series of multiple linear regression models to examine unique effects within domains while adjusting for sex (Table 2). In our model examining the unique effects of personality, we observed that social anhedonia continued to be negatively associated with positive temperament but was not independently associated with negative temperament and disinhibition. In our social functioning model, we found that social anhedonia was negatively associated with closeness and positively associated with loneliness but was not independently related to discord. Finally, in our symptom model, we found that social anhedonia was uniquely positively associated with child-reported depressive symptoms but was not independently associated with the CBCL scales. Although not shown in Table 2, when child-reported CDI was removed from this model leaving only the four CBCL scales, CBCL withdrawn depression was uniquely significantly associated with social anhedonia, whereas the other CBCL scales remained nonsignificant. Finally, social anhedonia was positively associated with sex in each model, such that males had greater social anhedonia compared with females.

Table 2.

Specific Within Domain Effects on Social Anhedonia.

Model	B	SE	t	p
Regression 1: Temperament domain (n = 275)
Sex	−4.12	0.81	−5.09	<.001
Positive temperament	−3.11	0.49	−6.36	<.001
Negative temperament	0.74	0.51	1.44	.15
Disinhibition	0.47	0.48	0.97	.33
Regression 2: Interpersonal functioning domain (n = 255)
Sex	−4.33	0.84	−5.16	<.001
NRI closeness	−2.99	0.67	−4.46	<.001
NRI discord	0.31	0.59	0.53	.60
UCLA Loneliness	0.55	0.20	2.68	.008
Regression 3: Symptom domain (n = 257)
Sex	−5.06	0.84	−5.99	<.001
CBCL withdrawn depression	0.34	0.27	1.29	.20
CBCL social problems	−0.14	0.32	−0.44	.66
CBCL thought problems	0.32	0.36	0.87	.38
CBCL attention problems	0.07	0.17	0.40	.69
CDI	0.51	0.09	5.62	<.001

Note. NRI = Network Relationships Inventory; UCLA = University of California, Los Angeles; CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist; CDI = Child Depression Inventory.

We next conducted a single regression model in which all the significant variables from the domain-level regressions were entered simultaneously. Thus, positive temperament, relationship closeness, loneliness, and child-reported depressive symptoms were regressed on social anhedonia (Table 3). We found that low positive temperament, less relationship closeness, and child-reported depressive symptoms remained significantly independently associated with social anhedonia.

Table 3.

Across-Domain Effects on Social Anhedonia (n = 238).

Model	B	SE	t	p
Sex	−4.26	0.85	−5.03	<.001
Positive temperament	−2.30	0.56	−4.13	<.001
NRI closeness	−2.23	0.63	−3.56	<.001
UCLA Loneliness	0.32	0.22	1.43	.15
CDI	0.21	0.10	5.72	.04

Note. NRI = Network Relationships Inventory; UCLA = University of California, Los Angeles; CDI = Child Depression Inventory.

Moderating Effects of Sex

Finally, we examined whether sex moderated the associations of social anhedonia with personality, social functioning, and symptoms for all of the variables that exhibited significant bivariate relationships with social anhedonia. The significant interactions are presented in Table 4 (Supplemental Table 1 includes the full regression outputs for nonsignificant interactions). Sex significantly moderated the association between social anhedonia and positive temperament, relationship closeness, relationship discord, and loneliness. No other interactions were significant (see Supplemental Table 1).

Table 4.

Sex Moderates Associations of Social Anhedonia With Traits, Social Functioning, and Symptoms.

Model	b	SE	t	p	Simple slopes		95% CI[Lower, upper]
Positive temperament and sex
Intercept	−0.08	0.39	−0.19	.85
Sex	−4.10	0.78	−5.24	<.001
Positive temperament	−2.74	0.39	−7.00	<.001
Positive temperament by sex	1.59	0.78	2.02	.04
					Male	−3.54	[−4.63, −2.45]
					Female	−1.95	[−3.05, −0.86]
Relationship closeness and sex
Intercept	−0.16	0.40	−0.39	0.70
Sex	−3.63	0.80	−4.55	<.001
NRI closeness	−3.06	0.40	−7.66	<.001
NRI closeness by sex	2.36	0.80	2.95	.003
					Male	−4.24	[−5.34, −3.14]
					Female	−1.88	[−3.00, −0.76]
Relationship discord and sex
Intercept	−0.09	0.43	−0.20	0.84
Sex	−4.14	0.86	−4.84	<.001
NRI discord	1.72	0.43	4.00	<.001
NRI discord by sex	−2.02	0.86	−2.35	.02
					Male	2.73	[1.55, 3.92]
					Female	0.71	[−0.61, 2.03]
Loneliness and sex
Intercept	0.22	0.42	0.52	0.60
Sex	−5.57	0.85	−6.59	<.001
Loneliness	2.69	0.43	6.24	<.001
Loneliness by sex	−2.19	0.86	−2.55	.01
					Male	3.78	[2.48, 5.10]
					Female	1.60	[0.52, 2.68]

Note. Simple slopes are provided for males and females. CI = confidence interval; NRI = Network Relationships Inventory.

Results of the simple slope follow-up tests for male and females are also included in Table 4 and simple slopes plots for each interaction are provided in Figure 1. For the interaction between positive temperament and child sex, the simple slopes for males and females were both significant, such that social anhedonia was negatively associated with positive temperament; however, the strength of the association was larger for males (Figure 1a). Similarly, for the interaction between relationship closeness and child sex, the simple slopes for males and females were both significant, such that social anhedonia was negatively associated with relationships closeness but the association was larger for males (Figure 1b). For the interaction between relationship discord and child sex, the simple slope was significant for males only, such that social anhedonia was positively associated with discord (Figure 1c). Finally, for the interaction between loneliness and child sex, social anhedonia was significantly associated with loneliness in both males and females but again the relationship was stronger in males. Overall, the simple slope results indicated that positive temperament and several aspects of interpersonal functioning are more strongly related to social anhedonia in early adolescent males than females.

Figure 1.

Simple slope plot examples for temperament, social functioning, and symptoms.

Discussion

The current study sought to characterize the correlates of social anhedonia in early adolescence by focusing on three important domains: personality, social functioning, and psychopathology. Social anhedonia is of especial interest during adolescence, which is a time marked by increasing social challenges, including shifts in familial and peer relationships, as well as significant physical and neurological changes (Casey et al., 2008; La Greca & Harrison, 2005; Steinberg & Morris, 2001). In addition, early adolescence is the developmental period in which social anhedonia changes most rapidly (Dodell-Feder & Germine, 2018). Yet much of the research on social anhedonia is in adult samples; thus, our goal was to extend this literature into adolescence by taking the most commonly examined correlates in adult studies of social anhedonia. Our results found a consistently bleak picture in which social anhedonia was associated with a maladaptive personality profile, poorer social functioning, and an array of symptoms, particularly among males. Moreover, an important contribution of this study is that we found evidence that personality, social functioning, and symptom relationships with social anhedonia were not attributable to the shared variance of those domains, suggesting that social anhedonia exhibits pervasive and independent associations with a variety of psychological constructs.

Previous research and our own results further bolster the growing calls for research on social anhedonia and to extend this area of research to adolescents in particular. While social anhedonia may share a resemblance to other more well established constructs, it is especially focused on the lack of experiencing enjoyment from social interaction. It is more narrowly defined than introversion, does not include the component of fear expected in shyness, and is more subjective and affectively laden than social disinterest. Given these differences, social anhedonia may have a unique set of correlates. In addition, studying the differences between social anhedonia and related constructs is likely to be especially meaningful for future research using the RDoC framework as social anhedonia may be more relevant to the positive valence domain and neural reward systems than related constructs such as shyness and social disinterest. As a result, our article makes an important contribution to the literature by identifying the characteristics of social anhedonia in adolescents. We briefly describe the results for each domain.

The pattern of findings for personality/temperament were generally consistent with previous research as social anhedonia had stronger and more consistent associations with positive temperament as opposed to negative temperament or disinhibition (e.g., Gooding et al., 2017; Olino et al., 2016), which has been found in the adult literature. Indeed, the relationships between social anhedonia and negative temperament or disinhibition were greatly reduced when accounting for shared variance with positive temperament. This also demonstrates the value in accounting for the shared variance among temperament traits and should be considered in future studies as well.

In the interpersonal domain, we found that social anhedonia was associated with poorer functioning across all of the measures we examined. Interestingly, social anhedonia exhibited more robust associations with a lack of closeness, rather than discord, with parents and best friends. Consistent with prior research in adults, we also found that social anhedonia was associated with greater loneliness (Barkus & Badcock, 2019). It is noteworthy that individuals with social anhedonia, who prefer isolation, nevertheless still report feeling isolated, suggesting that social anhedonia may be experienced as distressing, rather than as a more disaffected disposition like social disinterest.

Social anhedonia was also related to a broad range of symptoms in bivariate analyses. When accounting for the overlap among symptom dimensions, a common phenomenon (Michelini et al., 2019), we found that depressive symptoms were the only symptom domains uniquely associated with social anhedonia. This is noteworthy, given that social anhedonia appeared to be highly transdiagnostic when considering our bivariate associations and in prior research (Barkus & Badcock, 2019). While social anhedonia may indeed exhibit some transdiagnostic characteristics, depression may be the domain of psychopathology that is most robustly associated in early adolescents, at least in community samples. However, the stronger link between social anhedonia and depression rather than anxiety is consistent with the tripartite model, which posits that reduced positive affect is uniquely characteristic of depression, but not anxiety—a pattern that also fits with our personality/temperament findings (Clark & Watson, 1991). In addition, based on the large literature demonstrating a relationship between social anhedonia and psychosis/schizotypal traits (e.g., J. J. Blanchard et al., 2009; J. L. Blanchard et al., 2001), we might have expected that social anhedonia would also have a unique association with CBCL thought problems, which was the closest to a measure of psychosis spectrum symptoms included in our battery. The inclusion of more targeted measures of schizophrenia spectrum symptoms may have revealed stronger relationships. Alternatively, such relationships may have emerged in an older adolescent sample, which would be closer to the beginning of the risk period for psychotic symptoms.

Across each of the correlates, social anhedonia tended to be more strongly associated with difficulties among males relative to females. For starters, males reported more social anhedonia than females as has been reported elsewhere (e.g., Barkus & Badcock, 2019). In addition, the results of moderator analyses indicated that social anhedonia was more strongly associated with lower positive temperament and relationship closeness as well as greater relationship discord and loneliness in males than females. Sex differences during early adolescence may be influenced by a variety of factors, such as adolescent girls placing greater importance on peer evaluation, loneliness, and need for closeness (Rose & Rudolph, 2006).

Perhaps the most important contribution of this article is our examination of whether there are unique associations between social anhedonia, personality, social functioning, and symptoms while accounting for shared variance across these latter three domains. In highly conservative analyses that accounted for this overlap, we observed that positive temperament, relationship closeness, and depressive symptoms were all uniquely related to social anhedonia rather than tapping the same aspects of social anhedonia.

This article aids in extending social anhedonia research to early adolescence by providing a detailed snapshot of the personality, social functioning, and psychopathology correlates of social anhedonia, which until now has been studied primarily in adult samples. Indeed, this is the first study, to our knowledge, to examine associations of social anhedonia with multiple domains of psychopathology and functioning in a community sample of adolescents. However, our study had several limitations. First, the design was cross-sectional, precluding us from being able to establish the temporal ordering of the relationships of social anhedonia with personality, social functioning, and symptoms. Second, we only examined early adolescents, limiting our ability to examine age-related effects. Further studies of younger and older youth are needed. Third, we did not have detailed measures of psychosis or schizotypal traits, which have been found to relate to social anhedonia. However, we did include the thought problem scale from the CBCL and, as noted above, thought problems were related to social anhedonia. Fourth, although we had informant (mothers) reports of symptoms and personality, our social functioning measures were limited to self-report. Getting informant reports of social functioning may be useful, as it is plausible that social anhedonia influences perceptions of one’s relationships. Fifth, we did not include a measure of nonsocial (e.g., physical) anhedonia, limiting our ability to conclude whether our observations were specific to social anhedonia or apply to anhedonia more generally. Sixth, we conducted numerous statistical tests and did not correct the alpha level. However, our conclusions are based on the overall pattern of results rather than emphasizing any particular finding. Finally, we did not include facet-level measures of personality traits, which provide fine-grained information on the specific components of personality that best characterize social anhedonia (e.g., Gooding et al., 2017; Olino et al., 2016).

In summary, social anhedonia appears to be associated with a number of psychosocial problems in early adolescence, especially among males. As this is one of the first studies to examine correlates of social anhedonia during this developmental period, additional research is needed to replicate these results. Longitudinal studies are also necessary to determine whether these findings extend to other developmental periods and to tease out the temporal relationships between social anhedonia and its correlates.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental_Table_1 – Supplemental material for Examining Personality, Interpersonal, and Symptom Correlates of Social Anhedonia in Early Adolescent Males and Females

Supplemental material, Supplemental_Table_1 for Examining Personality, Interpersonal, and Symptom Correlates of Social Anhedonia in Early Adolescent Males and Females by Brandon L. Goldstein, Emma E. Mumper, Kriti Behari, Diane C. Gooding and Daniel N. Klein in The Journal of Early Adolescence

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by National Institute of Mental Health Grant RO1 MH069942.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

ORCID iD

Brandon L. Goldstein

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author Biographies

Brandon L. Goldstein is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington CT. He obtained a BS from the University of Maryland, College Park and a PhD from Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the etiology of depression and anxiety in childhood and adolescence by studying psychological and biological risk factors in longitudinal and family studies. In addition, he is interested in how child maltreatment and family violence influence development in youth.

Emma E. Mumper is a doctoral student at Stony Brook University. She earned a BS from Indiana University and completed her master’s degree at Stony Brook in 2018. She is interested in affective and motivational systems involved in the development and course of internalizing disorders, as well as the translation of etiological risk factors into evidence-based interventions.

Kriti Behari is a postgraduate research associate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. She holds a master’s in psychology from Stony Brook University. She is interested in the cognitive and psychosocial factors involved in the development and maintenance of depressive disorders, as well as in the adaptation, implementation, and personalization of psychotherapy interventions.

Diane C. Gooding is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her AB from Harvard University and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on identifying and validating markers, predictors, and precursors of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. In addition, she investigates social anhedonia as a transdiagnostic symptom across the life span. She is the primary developer of the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS).

Daniel N. Klein is Distinguished professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University. He obtained a BA from Brandeis University and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Buffalo. His research focuses on the classification, development, familial transmission, course, and treatment of depressive disorders in children, adolescents, and adults. He has published over 450 articles and chapters, and his work has been continuously supported by the National Institute of Mental Health since 1984.

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