Subjective cognitive effort mediates the relationship between affective expectations and experienced pleasure in dysphoric and non-dysphoric individuals.

Objectives: Research shows that expecting to enjoy an activity leads to greater enjoyment of that activity. This correspondence between expectations and experience extends to the context of depression, in which both expectations and experience of reward are diminished. However, the mechanisms underlying the relationship between affective expectations of reward and enjoyment of reward remain understudied. One candidate mechanism of such expectancy effects is effort expenditure for reward, which is also found to be diminished in depression. This study examined whether cognitive effort expenditure mediated the relationship between affective expectations of reward and experienced pleasure in response to reward in a sample of dysphoric (n = 85) and non-dysphoric (n = 79) participants.

Methods: Following an unsuccessful expectancy manipulation (reported separately in Horne & Quigley, Cogn. Ther. Res., 2024), participants rated how much pleasure they expected to experience upon earning a monetary reward during a cognitive effort progressive ratio task in which greater reward could be earned by expending greater effort. After completing the task, participants rated how much pleasure they experienced upon earning the reward and how much effort they felt they exerted.

Results and conclusions: We found that subjective, but not objective, effort expenditure mediated the relationship between expected and experienced pleasure, and this was true for both dysphoric and non-dysphoric participants. Anhedonia was a significant moderator, such that the mediated effect was only significant at moderate and high levels of anhedonia. Implications for the treatment of depression are discussed.