The pleasure of controlling aversive events: How anhedonia can lead to learned helplessness in depression-prone individuals.

Threats can be controlled via active avoidance, which is an adaptive coping behavior and helps to control our exposure to harmful stimuli. Whenever an upcoming threat is successfully prevented by active avoidance, the threat omission engenders a pleasant feeling – relief. This threat-omission-induced relief is believed to be rewarding, which positively reinforces the ongoing avoidance behaviors. With depression, particularly in the presence of anhedonia symptoms, it is likely that the pleasantness of this type of relief is impaired, resulting in weaker reinforcement for active avoidance. Anhedonia (a reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure) and learned helplessness (behavioral despair due to a diminished perception of control over aversive events), two key features of depression, have been well studied but mostly in separate strands of research. We hypothesized that if actively controlling threats would inherently be rewarding, anhedonia might affect this form of reward. This should result in a reduced motivation to engage in behaviors aimed at controlling future aversive events, which is reminiscent of a learned helplessness state. Therefore, studying the role of anhedonia during active control over threat helps to better understand the connections between the two separate research spotlights.