Fall Research Expo 2020

Anhedonia and Confidence in value-based decision-making

We sought out to understand the link between anhedonia and confidence. Previous research has looked at reward abnormalities in anhedonic patients but the link between anhedonia and confidence was unclear. We first had to create an online experiment to measure confidence and preference for different foods. We adapted the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire to increase the variability of foods used as well as to make it suitable for a U.S. sample. The survey we created asked participants to rate 49 different foods based on their preference and then on their confidence in their preference rating. Using these preference ratings we then created a second survey which would be used in our analysis. In the end the task was to rate the 49 foods based on preference and confidence, rate them a second time, then participate in a forced choice task where they were asked to choose between two of the foods presented (80 pairs total), and finally they completed a depression survey. Using this data, IĀ used R to analyze the data and try to find some patterns and make conclusions. From the 130 people that we ended up getting reliable data from we concluded that anhedonic individuals are less consistent and confident in their food choices.

PRESENTED BY
PURM - Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program
College of Arts & Sciences 2023
Advised By
Join Keven for a virtual discussion
PRESENTED BY
PURM - Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program
College of Arts & Sciences 2023
Advised By

Comments

Hi! I thought your project was really interesting! You mentioned that the correlation between the BDI and MAP was not as high as you would have liked due to COVID-19 affecting people's responses on the MAP. Did you experience any other COVID related challenges when conducting your research?