Appetitive motivation in depressive anhedonia: Effects of piece-rate cash rewards on cardiac and behavioral outcomes.

Abstract

Deficits in self-regulation and motivation are central to depression. Using motivational intensity theory (Brehm & Self, 1989), the present research examined how depressive anhedonia influences effort during a piece-rate appetitive task. In piece-rate tasks, people can work at their own pace and are rewarded for each correct response, so they can gain rewards more quickly by expending more effort. A sample of community adults (n = 78) was evaluated for depressive anhedonia using a structured clinical interview, yielding depressive anhedonia and control groups. Participants completed a self-paced cognitive task, and each correct response yielded a cash reward (3 cents or 15 cents, manipulated within-person). Using impedance cardiography, effort-related physiological activity was assessed via the cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP). The results indicated lower reward responsiveness in the anhedonia group. Compared to the control group, the depressive anhedonia group showed significantly less baseline-to-task change in PEP, and they performed marginally worse on the task. The experiment supports the predictions made by applying motivational intensity theory to depression and offers a useful paradigm for evaluating anhedonic effects on effort while people are striving for appealing rewards.

The Intensity Side of Volition

“…PEP reactivity of individuals with low levels of depressive symptoms increased, as expected, with growing monetary rewards or punishments. However, individuals with high levels of depressive symptoms did not respond to high monetary incentives (e.g., Brinkmann & Franzen, 2013;Franzen & Brinkmann, 2015Silvia et al, 2020). Similar results have been obtained when social recognition instead of a monetary reward was offered as incentive (Brinkmann & Franzen, 2017;Brinkmann et al, 2014), and results have been replicated in a sample of patients with major depressive disorder (Franzen et al, 2019).…”

Depressive Anhedonia and Creative Self‐concepts, Behaviors, and Achievements

“…The creativity assessments were completed during an individual laboratory session that lasted 2 hours. Along with cognitive tasks examining effort (e.g., Silvia et al, 2020b), participants completed self‐report scales assessing different aspects of creativity. These tasks were selected to capture two main facets of creativity that are amenable to self‐report assessment: people’s creative behaviors and people’s beliefs about their creativity.…”

“…The following information about recruitment, screening, and participation is taken directly, with minor editing, from the OSM for the project's first publication (Silvia et al, 2020).…”

“…In the present research, we explored differences in creativity in a sample of adults who differed in depressive anhedonia, determined via face‐to‐face structured clinical interviews. As part of a broader study on anhedonia and motivation (Silvia et al, 2020a,b), we included self‐report scales that assessed creative self‐efficacy and identity (Karwowski, Lebuda, & Wisniewska, 2018), self‐rated creativity in different domains (Kaufman, 2012), everyday “little‐c” creative behaviors (Batey, 2007; Dollinger, 2003), and creative achievements (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005). Time constraints precluded performance measures, such as divergent thinking or humor production, but self‐report measures of creativity offer a well‐rounded view of people’s creative self‐concepts—how they construe their creative abilities, skills, and experiences (Karwowski & Lebuda, 2017)—and their past creative behaviors and achievements (Kaufman, 2019; Silvia, Wigert, Reiter‐Palmon, & Kaufman, 2012).…”

“…The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The data stem from related research from this larger project (Silvia, Eddington, Harper, Burgin, & Kwapil, 2020). The Mplus, R, and data files are available at Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/cqnyt/)…”