Examining associations between social anhedonia and convergent thinking using the Remote Associates Test

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Social anhedonia (SocAnh) predicts increased risk of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, with evidence that these disorders are associated with increased creativity. However, it is still largely unknown whether SocAnh is associated with one central aspect of creative thinking, convergent thinking.

Methods: In two studies, college students with either extreme levels of SocAnh (n = 44 and n = 70) or controls with an average level of SocAnh (n = 111 and n = 100) completed a convergent thinking task, the Remote Associates Test, and also completed measures of current affect. In the second study, participants also completed a divergent thinking task.

Results: In both studies, the SocAnh group had better performance than controls on the convergent thinking task. Further, this group difference remained after removing shared variance with current affect. In Study 2, groups did not differ on divergent thinking.

Conclusions: Overall, consistent with research linking schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and creativity, the current research suggests that SocAnh is associated with increases in some aspects of creativity.

KEYWORDS:

• Social anhedonia
• schizophrenia-spectrum
• creativity
• convergent thinking
• Remote Associates Test
• divergent thinking

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of the current study are openly available in the Open Science Framework repository, Spann et al. (2021).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.