Longitudinal evaluation of anhedonia as a mediator of fear of positive evaluation and other depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT

Fear of positive evaluation (FPE) is experiencing dread during real or potential praise. FPE is associated with social anxiety, but its relation to depressive symptoms is unclear. Anhedonia is a core symptom of depression related to symptoms of anxiety in cross-sectional research. The current study investigated the indirect effect of FPE on depressive symptoms via anhedonia over time. One-hundred ninety-six participants completed three waves of questionnaires over a total timespan of approximately four months via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, including measures of FPE, depressive symptoms, and anticipatory and consummatory anhedonia. Findings indicated that anticipatory anhedonia at Time 2 mediated the relationship between FPE at Time 1 and depressive symptoms at Time 3. Consummatory anhedonia, however, did not. Each model was contextualised by accounting for prospective covarying relationships, such as depressive symptoms predicting the same symptoms at later waves. The constellation of findings is considered within a reward devaluation framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Fear of positive evaluation
• depression
• anticipatory anhedonia
• consummatory anhedonia
• longitudinal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

D. Gage Jordan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4374-016X

Notes

1. Per QIDS-SR instructions, participants are asked to answer either item 6 (“decreased appetite”) or 7 (“increased appetite”), but not both. In addition, participants also answer either item 8 (“decreased weight within the past two weeks”) or item 9 (“increased weight within the past two weeks”), but not both. These items constitute appetite and weight disturbances for this measure, respectively. However, for the present sample, participants were allowed to provide responses for items 6, 7, 8, and 9. Therefore, we took the maximum value of items 6/7 and items 8/9 to best reflect the “appetite disturbance” and “weight disturbance” variables.

2. When controlling for items 6, 7, 8, and 9 each as their own covariate in separate models, the pattern of findings were similar; neither increased or decreased appetite, nor did decreased or increased weight within the past two weeks diminish the significant indirect effect of anticipatory anhedonia.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) R15 AREA grant [grant number 1R15MH101573-01A1] and the Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University.