Author's personal copy The assessment of interpersonal pleasure: Introduction of the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS) and preliminary findings Diane Carol Gooding a,b,n , Madeline Johnson Pflum a a Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1202 W. Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, United States b Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI 53706, United States article info Article history: Received 8 February 2013 Received in revised form 5 October 2013 Accepted 16 October 2013 Available online 22 October 2013 Keywords: Anhedonia Chapman scales TEPS Social interaction abstract Although several valid measures of pleasure and anhedonia exist, there is a relative paucity of measures that adequately assess pleasure for social interactions. The Anticipatory and Consummatory Interperso- nal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS) is a measure specifically designed to assess hedonic capacity for social and interpersonal pleasure. Various aspects of the validity and reliability of the ACIPS were examined in several ways. First, we assessed the factor structure as well as the internal consistency, convergent, and discriminant validity of the ACIPS in 496 young adults recruited from undergraduate classes. Second, we investigated the temporal stability of the measure by having a subset of the group return for retesting. Results from the factor analysis suggested a three-factor model. The ACIPS was found to be highly reliable in terms of internal consistency and test–retest stability. Further, the ACIPS correlated in a theoretically meaningful way with other measures of pleasure and affect. The current research indicates that the ACIPS is a reliable and valid questionnaire to assess hedonic capacity for social and interpersonal pleasure in nonclinical samples. Suggestions for further clinical and research applications using the ACIPS are offered. & 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Theorists have asserted that hedonia, or the capacity for pleasure, is essential to well-being (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011). Indeed, anhedonia, the loss or reduction of the capacity for pleasure, is a prominent feature of several forms of psycho- pathology, including depression and schizophrenia (Andreasen, 1982; Horan et al., 2008; Klein, 1984; Leventhal et al., 2006; Winograd-Gurvich et al., 2006; Zhornitsky et al., 2012). Anhedonia is also observed during stimulant withdrawal (Gawin and Kleber, 1986) and following dopaminergic loss in Parkinson's disease (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011). 1.1. The assessment of anhedonia Pleasure is comprised of complex cognitive and emotional processes involving wanting and liking, as well as learning. There are several different components of pleasure, with at least partially dissociable neural circuitry (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011; Berridge and Robinson, 2003). Diminished ability to experience pleasure may be assessed directly through measures of anhedonia, or indirectly through measures of pleasure. To date, the commonly used self-report measures used to assess anhedonia include the revised Social Anhedonia Scale (Eckblad et al., 1982), the revised Physical Anhedonia Scale (Chapman et al., 1976), the Fawcett– Clark Pleasure Scale (Fawcett et al., 1983), the Snaith–Hamilton Pleasure Scale (Snaith et al., 1995) and more recently, the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS, Gard et al., 2006). The revised Social Anhedonia Scale (Eckblad et al., 1982) focuses entirely on decreased pleasure in the social domain, whereas the Physical Anhedonia Scale (Chapman et al., 1976) assesses decreased pleasure for physical stimuli and/or sensations. The capacity for physical pleasure may be assessed through reactions to descriptions of sensory experiences, activities and/or hobbies, and food/drink. The revised Chapman anhedonia scales vary the wording so that some items refer to the past, a few refer to future or hypothetical situations, and most pertain to a more “in general” perspective. Thus, both Chapman scales yield a measure of trait-anhedonia. The scales are sufficiently sensitive to varia- tions in hedonic capacity to enable their application in studies of psychometrically at-risk samples (e.g., Blanchard et al., 2011; Brown et al., 2008; Cohen et al., 2010b; Gooding et al., 2002; Gooding et al., 2005; Kerns, 2006), first-degree relatives of Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychres Psychiatry Research 0165-1781/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2013.10.012 n Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin- Madison, 1202 W. Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, United States. Tel.: þ1 608 262 3918; fax: þ1 608 262 4029. E-mail address: dgooding@wisc.edu (D.C. Gooding). Psychiatry Research 215 (2014) 237–243