Abstract
Healthy reward processing is a complex interplay of several components. Recent self-report measures of anhedonia, the decrease or loss of hedonic capacity, take this complexity into account. The Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale (DARS) measures interest, motivation, effort and consummatory pleasure across four domains: hobbies, food/drink, social activities and sensory experiences. In the present cross-sectional survey study, we validated the German version of the DARS in a sample of 557 young healthy adults. Factor structure as well as convergent and divergent validity were assessed. As a secondary aim, we examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on state anhedonia and depression severity. Our results suggest good convergent and divergent validity and high internal consistency of the German DARS. The original differentiation of four factors mapping onto the four domains was confirmed and measurement invariance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was established. We conclude that the DARS is a valid instrument to comprehensively assess state anhedonia in healthy German samples. Future studies should further assess the utility of the German DARS in clinical contexts. In line with many previous studies, participants during the pandemic reported significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms compared to participants in the months before. We found no indication that the COVID-19 pandemic affected state hedonic capacity.
Highlights
The ability to experience pleasure is an important part of subjective well-being and mental health (Kringelbach and Berridge, 2017)
We focused on measures of self-report, the validation of a recent scale designed to capture different facets of state anhedonia: the Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale (DARS; Rizvi et al, 2015)
Since the differentiation of anhedonic components is an important question in anhedonia research, we evaluated confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models distinguishing interest, motivation, effort and consummatory pleasure
Summary
The ability to experience pleasure is an important part of subjective well-being and mental health (Kringelbach and Berridge, 2017). Identifying the exact hedonic dysfunction underlying the symptom of anhedonia and potentially distinguishing anhedonic subtypes are important goals of clinical research. For this purpose, measures of anhedonia on different units of analysis, e.g., on neurobiological, behavioral and self-report levels, have to be integrated (Cuthbert and Insel, 2013). Measures of anhedonia on different units of analysis, e.g., on neurobiological, behavioral and self-report levels, have to be integrated (Cuthbert and Insel, 2013) This necessitates to be mindful of the exact reward processing components the applied measurement instrument targets. The DARS is one of several newly developed anhedonia scales aiming to integrate findings from the neurobiology of reward processing while providing culturally unbiased and contemporary item content (Rizvi et al, 2016)
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