The pleasure experience of low- and high anhedonic undergraduates

Some emotional and descriptive aspects of an imagined pleasure experience were examined for low- and high-anhedonic undergraduates. Subjects were classified into low-anhedonic or high-anhedonic on the basis of scores on the.Physical Anhedonia Scale (Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1976). Emotional responses were derived from scores on the Differential Emotions Scale (Izard, Dougherty, Bloxom, & Kotsch, 1974) and included anxiety items. A factor analysis was conducted for each of the two scales used and factor scores were computed. Because males scored as significantly more anhedonic than females, analyses were conducted separately for 49 dependent measures: recall of pleasant situations, average rating of pleasantness, frequency of pleasant experiences, individual situation ratings of pleasantness (maximum of 10), factor scores for 12 emotion factors, and factor scores for 24 anhedonia factors. The overall T2 for both males and females was highly significant, suggesting that low-anhedonics of both sexes differ from high-anhe-donics in their report's "regarding their emotional and experiential concomitants of the pleasure experience. The precise source of the difference was not, however, discernible. The factor structures of both the Differential Emotions Scale and the Physical Anhedonia Scale are discussed. Although the structure of the Differential Emotions Scale clearly replicates the work of Izard et al. (1974), that of the Physical Anhedonia Scale failed to be consistent. The weaknesses of the latter instrument are discussed with reference to factor analytic study.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat