New research has found that social anhedonia, a reduced ability to enjoy or feel rewarded by social interactions, may be more closely linked to how young people experience social situations than the overall severity of their depression.
The study, led by our Biomedical Research Centre’s Depression Therapeutics Theme, explored how young adults respond to positive and negative everyday social experiences.
The findings suggest that focusing on specific symptoms such as social anhedonia could help researchers better understand why some young people experience difficulties in relationships and social setting, even when they share similar levels of depression.
The research involved 553 young adults aged 18 to 24 from across the UK. Participants completed online questionnaires measuring depression symptoms and social anhedonia, alongside a computer-based social decision-making task that examined how they responded to generous and unfair behaviour from others.
Researchers found that overall depression symptoms had little effect on task performance. In contrast, people with higher levels of social anhedonia showed clear behavioural differences.
Participants with greater social anhedonia were less likely to engage in social interactions, invested less when others behaved generously, and were less affected by negative social experiences. These findings suggest that social anhedonia may influence how people learn from and respond to social feedback.
The researchers believe that some young people with social anhedonia may be less sensitive to both social rewards and setbacks, making it harder to develop and maintain positive relationships.
Understanding these differences could help identify meaningful subgroups within people experiencing depression and support the development of more personalised treatments.
The study was led by Brennan Delattre, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on understanding how social learning, reward processing and decision-making contribute to mental health difficulties, particularly depression in young people.
Brennan said: “Understanding how young people experience social reward could help researchers develop more personalised approaches to supporting mental health, ultimately improving outcomes for those living with depression and related conditions.
“Rather than viewing depression as a single condition, future interventions may be designed to address specific symptoms such as difficulties experiencing social reward.”
The full paper, Social anhedonia predicts behavioral differences in young people with and without depression during social exchange, was published in JAMA Network Open and can be read online.
