Hedonic tone and negative affect suppression: A conditional indirect pathway to delay discounting

• Main Author: Policarpio, Monica Renee G.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Delay discounting (Psychology); Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5072
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study examined how pleasure predisposition and self-regulation influence discounting behavior, the devaluing of delayed rewards. It examined how low regard for future reward (i.e. anticipatory anhedonia) and how the control of negative emotion (i.e. emotion regulation) influence the preference for smaller-sooner reward than larger-later reward (i.e. discounting). It was hypothesized that low anticipatory wanting and employing suppression promotes greater discounting behavior whereas employing reappraisal inhibits discounting behavior. The data were collected from 206 participants and analyzed using H y s Process macro SPSS. The results showed a conditional indirect pathway leading to discounting. The findings suggest that the individuals with dispositional trait anticipatory anhedonia discount greater if they suppress their emotion when feeling down. Basing from the assumption that greater discounting arises after a cognitively effortful task, suppressing negative emotion as a cognitively effortful task, has shown to promote greater discounting. It has become more effortful to individuals with anticipatory anhedonia for demonstrating blunted negative reaction. In other words, the depletion of cognitive resources was not necessarily due to the amount of affect regulated, but with more effort involved in self-monitoring during the suppression blunted affect. The depleted executive control resulted to decreased attention for weighing both larger later and smaller sooner option. Decreased attention resources led to a tendency to prefer smaller sooner reward. The study suggests that individuals with anticipatory anhedonia discount greater when suppressing their blunted negative affect.