Investigating depression-linked variation in expectancies of enjoyable benefits and effortful costs associated with a potentially rewarding activity

This research investigated depression-related variation in enjoyment and effort expectancies that could, in principle, underpin attenuated reward-seeking motivation. Four laboratory studies are reported, involving university students varying in depressive frequency levels. It was observed that heightened depressive frequency was associated with dampened enjoyment expectancy, but only when the formation of such expectancies occurred after a personally-relevant experience. This association was further mediated by dampened appraisal of enjoyment experience. Conversely, there was no evidence for depressive frequency-linked inflated effort expectancy. These findings contribute to understanding reward-seeking deficits observed in depression, and have potential implications for future research and applications.