Study reveals emotional prediction deficits in individuals with high social anhedonia

A research team led by Dr. Raymond Chan from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators, has uncovered key differences in how individuals with high social anhedonia—a reduced ability to experience pleasure in social interactions—predict and experience emotions in real-life situations.

Their findings are published in Schizophrenia Bulletin Open.

In this study, the researchers found that individuals with high social anhedonia tended to anticipate less pleasure from social events. There is a significant gap between their predicted and actual emotional experiences, particularly in social contexts. The present work is one of the pioneering studies on affective forecasting in real-life situations.

Affective forecasting, the ability to predict emotional responses to future events, plays a critical role in daily decision-making and mental health. While previous research has focused on controlled experimental settings, real-life complexities and social interactions have been largely overlooked, particularly in populations with social anhedonia.

To bridge this gap, the researchers conducted two studies analyzing thousands of real-life events.

In the first study, researchers examined 8,031 real-life events reported by 109 healthy young adults, revealing that participants generally found social events more pleasurable and exciting than non-social ones. However, the anticipation gap—the difference between expected and actual emotional responses—was notably larger for social events.

The second study focused on 60 participants, including 28 individuals with high social anhedonia and 32 with low social anhedonia, analyzing 2,066 real-life events.

The findings showed that individuals with high social anhedonia not only anticipated less pleasure from social interactions but also exhibited a more pronounced anticipation gap, specifically in social—but not non-social—contexts.

These findings provide valuable insights into the cognitive and emotional mechanisms underlying social anhedonia and may inform future intervention strategies for individuals with subclinical features of mental disorders. The researchers suggested that impairments in affective forecasting could be a potential therapeutic target for clinical populations.

Future studies should further explore this phenomenon in clinical groups and examine its relationship with anhedonia.

More information:
Rui-Ting Zhang et al, Real-life Affective Forecasting in Young Adults with High Social Anhedonia: An Experience Sampling Study, Schizophrenia Bulletin Open (2025). DOI: 10.1093/schizbullopen/sgaf003