Anticipatory and consummatory pleasure in eating disorders

Recent research suggests that anhedonia, or the inability to experience pleasure, is elevated in individuals with eating disorders (EDs). However, past literature has only studied anhedonia in EDs as a unidimensional construct rather than separately examining anticipatory (i.e., prediction of pleasure for a future event) and consummatory (i.e., enjoyment of a present event) pleasure. Given that these subcomponents of pleasure have distinct neurobiological correlates, studying pleasure as a multifaceted construct may yield important insights into the underlying mechanisms of binge eating or food restriction. A sample of 124 women with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or other specified feeding or eating disorder and 84 control women (CW) completed self-report measures of anticipatory pleasure, consummatory pleasure, ED symptoms, depression, harm avoidance, and anxiety. Individuals with EDs endorsed significantly lower anticipatory pleasure than CW, but there were no significant group differences in consummatory pleasure. Further, there were no significant differences in self-reported pleasure among ED diagnostic groups. Within the ED sample, anticipatory pleasure but not consummatory pleasure was positively related to binge eating frequency and significantly negatively correlated with cognitive ED symptoms, state and trait anxiety, and harm avoidance. Both anticipatory and consummatory pleasure was negatively associated with depression. The results of the current study suggest that lower pleasure across the ED spectrum may be due to deficits in anticipatory, but not consummatory, pleasure. Future research should continue to explore the behavioral, affective, and neural correlates of anticipatory pleasure in EDs to characterize better how it relates to the onset and maintenance of binge eating and other eating disorder pathology. Anhedonia, or the inability to experience pleasure, has been observed in individuals with eating disorders. Neuroscience research suggests that pleasure may be separated into two distinct components: anticipatory pleasure (how much someone predicts they will enjoy a future experience) and consummatory pleasure (how much someone enjoys a present experience). In the current study, individuals with eating disorders and healthy controls completed questionnaires assessing anticipatory and consummatory pleasure, binge eating, other eating disorder behaviors, depression, anxiety, and constructs associated with reward and punishment sensitivity. The sample with eating disorders reported significantly lower anticipatory but not consummatory pleasure than the control sample. Within the eating disorder sample, greater anticipatory pleasure was also related to higher binge eating frequency but lower depression, anxiety, and weight and shape concerns. These results suggest that anticipatory pleasure may be particularly important in future research on the etiology and treatment of eating disorders.