Blunted reward responsiveness prospectively predicts emotional distress when exposed to a naturalistic stressor

Abstract

Both stress and blunted reward responsiveness have been identified as core risk factors of depression. Whether blunted reward responsiveness increases psychological vulnerability to real‐life stress from a dynamic perspective (from stress reactivity to recovery) has not been investigated. By utilizing a real‐world stressful event (i.e. the final examination), this study aimed to explore the role of reward responsiveness in the stress‐emotional distress relationship during stress reactivity and recovery phases. We followed 57 undergraduates with three assessments, from six weeks before examination weeks (T1, baseline), one day before the examinations (T2) to two weeks after the examinations (T3), therefore, covering stress reactivity (T1 to T2) and recovery (T2 to T3) phases. At baseline, reward responsiveness was measured as the Reward Positivity (RewP) in the doors task. Stress and emotional distress (anxiety and depression) were reported at T1, T2 and T3 to capture their dynamic changes. Results showed that self‐report stress levels significantly increased from T1 to T2 (stress reactivity phase) and decreased from T2 to T3 (stress recovery phase). Furthermore, blunted reward responsiveness at baseline prospectively predicted emotional distress during the stress reactivity phase but not the recovery phase. Specifically, during the stress reactivity phase, higher perceived stress was associated with greater anxiety and depression only in participants with relatively smaller residual RewP amplitudes but not in participants with relatively larger residual RewP amplitudes. Our study demonstrated that a blunted reward responsiveness is a vulnerable factor of depression, especially when exposed to stress. Our findings provide insights into prevention and intervention for stress‐related disturbance.

Network analysis of acute stress reaction in a sample of Chinese male military college students

“…The ASR was evaluated after the participants were informed that they would undergo the military physical fitness test the next day. According to previous studies, the examination was a real-world stressful event (e.g., final examination) ( 43 , 44 ), and researchers found that students experienced stress on the day before the final examination ( 44 ). Therefore, the likelihood that the participants included in this study would experience acute stress was very high in the face of the important military physical fitness test.…”

Heightened neural reward responsiveness functions as a plasticity factor moderating the association between childhood emotional abuse and young adult depressive symptoms: Evidence of differential susceptibility.

“…Although we proposed three possible explanations, there were still some findings that might not be fully understood. For instance, some studies appear to show "crossover" or "disordinal" (the key nature of differential susceptibility; see Figure S2 in the online supplemental materials) interaction patterns within their blunted RewP × Stress Exposure findings, but have never explained them from a differential susceptibility perspective (e.g., Feurer et al, 2021;Yan et al, 2023). We call for direct statistical testing of the interaction patterns in the extant and future research and rethinking the role of the RewP based on these corrected analyses.…”

“…That is, the blunted RewP is unlikely to be sensitive to the environment, regardless of the type of environment (positive or negative; Dziura et al, 2023). Thus, existing research might misinterpret their blunted RewP × Stress Exposure interactions as diathesis-stress (e.g., Burani et al, 2023; Feurer et al, 2021; Goldstein et al, 2020; Yan et al, 2023), as under the framework of diathesis-stress, the blunted RewP should be vulnerable (or sensitive) to environmental stressors. Accordingly, there might be (at least) three possible reasons that explain the discrepancy between the current results and these previous findings.…”

“…The vast majority of these studies seem to show that blunted RewP may function as a “vulnerability” factor to amplify the negative effect of stress exposure on depression or that heightened RewP works as a “protective” factor against the detrimental stress effect. For example, greater cumulative lifetime acute stressors, perceived stress, or specific types of stress (e.g., social stress) were all found to be associated with more depressive symptoms, especially among individuals with blunted but not heightened RewP (Burani et al, 2023; Feurer et al, 2021; Pegg et al, 2019; Yan et al, 2023). Two longitudinal studies have both revealed that adolescents exposed to high severity of stressful life events and possessing blunted RewP showed the most severe depressive symptoms (Burani et al, 2021; Goldstein et al, 2020).…”

“…Second, these studies have only tested the role of RewP but ignored the independent contributions of its time-frequency decomposition components delta and theta, resulting in a great loss of valuable information. Third but most importantly, the vast majority of research has primarily adopted a traditional diathesis-stress perspective (Monroe & Simons, 1991) to explain these interactive findings (e.g., Burani et al, 2023; Feurer et al, 2021; Goldstein et al, 2020; Yan et al, 2023). That is, these studies have often considered blunted RewP as a “vulnerability” factor and proposed that individuals with blunted RewP are more vulnerable to adverse environments.…”