Abstract
Disruption of normal emotional experience is central to the phenomenology of depression. Twenty-three depressed outpatients and 23 control subjects performed a computerized decision-making task, during which affective ratings were assessed online to identify various dimensions of emotional experience. We sought to contrast regret (the comparison of the outcomes of selected and nonselected options) with the general negative appraisal of task events. The experience of regret was reduced in depressed patients, an effect that was particularly related to self-reported apathy scores. In an exploratory analysis, we observed that females had a general downward shift in their ratings, as compared with males, but disappointment and regret effects were of similar magnitude. The possible contribution of the orbitofrontal cortex to the phenomenology of regret is discussed. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/ supplemental.
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This work was funded by a Wellcome Trust Programme Grant to T.W.R., B.J.S., B. J. Everitt, and A. C. Roberts, and was completed within the University of Cambridge Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, supported by a consortium award from the Medical Research Council (U.K.) and the Wellcome Trust. H.W.C. was supported by a 3-year MRC studentship while this work was carried out. N.C. was supported by the Fondation Fyssen.
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Chase, H.W., Camille, N., Michael, A. et al. Regret and the negative evaluation of decision outcomes in major depression. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 10, 406–413 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.10.3.406
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.10.3.406