Schizophrenia is a severe and persisting mental illness characterized by a neurocognitive deficits, functional decline, and a constellation of positive and negative symptoms, with up to 60% of patients experiencing negative symptoms (Correll and Schooler, 2020). Negative symptoms include anhedonia, apathy, avolition, blunted or restricted affect, and attentional impairment (Andreasen, 1982; Bobes et al., 2010). Anhedonia, defined as the absence or diminution of the ability for pleasure, is one of the prominent symptoms of patients with major depressive disorder and schizophrenia (Andreasen, 1982; Leventhal et al., 2006; Winograd-Gurvich et al., 2006; Horan et al., 2008; Zhornitsky et al., 2012).

There is increasing evidence that social anhedonia, i.e., decreased interest in and/or reduced reward from social interactions, is distinct from other forms of anhedonia (Gooding and Pflum, 2014a,b, 2022). Social anhedonia is an indicator of heightened risk for the later development of a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder (Kwapil, 1998; Gooding et al., 2005, 2007). It appears across all phases of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, including the prodromal phase (e.g., Jhung et al., 2016). Findings from patients (e.g., Blanchard et al., 2001; Ritsner et al., 2018), first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia (e.g., Docherty and Sponheim, 2014; Umesh et al., 2018), and psychometrically identified schizotypes (e.g., Gooding et al., 2005) provide compelling evidence that social anhedonia is a trait-related symptom for many individuals within the schizophrenia spectrum. Thus, evaluating social anhedonia can be crucial in terms of understanding contributory aspects underlying schizophrenia-spectrum disorder.

Social anhedonia is also observed among several other forms of psychopathology (Barkus and Badcock, 2019; Liang et al., 2020; Gooding and Pflum, 2022). Currently, there is strong evidence that social anhedonia is a state-related symptom in patients with depressive disorder, though there are increasing reports of social anhedonia in autism, eating disorders, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use disorders. While there are several self-report measures designed to assess anhedonia, to date there are two validated scales specifically designed to measure social anhedonia. The Revised Social Anhedonia Scale (RSAS; Eckbland et al., 1982) is a direct measure of social anhedonia, whereas the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS; Gooding and Pflum, 2014a,b) is an indirect measure. Scores on the RSAS and ACIPS are strongly and negatively correlated with each other, though the two measures tap distinct aspects of social anhedonia (Gooding and Pflum, 2014a,b; Gooding et al., 2015, 2017). Some characteristics of the ACIPS distinguish it from the RSAS. First, the ACIPS was developed to assess individual differences in social pleasure, while the RSAS was originally developed to detect proneness to develop psychosis. Second, the ACIPS contains more updated content, measuring individuals’ ability to experience pleasure from social and interpersonal interactions that occur either in person or remotely (e.g., while texting). Recently, bivariate biometric analyses on twin data revealed that the ACIPS captures unique heritable contributions to social/interpersonal pleasure, in addition to sharing genetic variance with other self-report measures of positive affect (Gooding et al., 2021).

The ACIPS has been used in many cross-cultural contexts, such as in Western (US), European (Spanish), Eastern (Chinese), and Middle East (Israeli) samples. The internal consistency of the ACIPS has been high across all these contexts, regardless of whether the ACIPS was administered in English, European Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, or Hebrew, with ordinal alpha ranging from 0.85 to 0.96 (Chan et al., 2016; Gooding et al., 2016, 2017; Ritsner et al., 2018).

A few studies of the psychometric properties of the ACIPS have been conducted in cross-cultural contexts. For example, one research group (Gooding et al., 2016) examined the factor structure and construct validity of the ACIPS in a non-clinical Spanish adult sample. Using parallel analysis and maximum factor extraction, their analysis revealed a three-factor solution: Intimate Social Relations, Social bonding in the Context of Media, and Casual Socializing. Chan et al. (2016) examined the factor structure of the ACIPS in their non-clinical Chinese adult sample while also relying upon parallel analysis. They found a four factor structure characterized by Friendship, Family and Intimacy-Related Relationships, General Social Interactions, and Casual Interactions/Conversations. Chaix et al. (2017) compared one-, two-, and three- factor models using estimate fit testing for the French translation of the ACIPS. The best fitting solution was a three-factor model identifying Intimate Social Relations, Group Social Interactions, and Social Bonding and Making Connections as the factors. Thus far, there have been three cross-cultural validations of the ACIPS and they have been consistent in indicating the overall robustness of the measure.

Until now, the ACIPS has not been administered to any Korean samples. Prior to using the ACIPS in studies of Korean patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, it is imperative that investigators first validate a Korean translation of the scale in a non-clinical sample. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to validate the Korean translation of the ACIPS for use with Korean populations. Given the previous findings that the translated versions of the ACIPS, like the original English version, are characterized by high internal consistency, we predicted that the Korean translation of the ACIPS would also be characterized by high internal consistency. We also hypothesized that factor analysis of the Korean translation of the ACIPS would reveal at least three but no more than four factors which could account for at least 50% of the variance. As a further examination of construct validity and measure of fidelity with the original English version of the ACIPS, we also examined the relationship between the Korean translation of the ACIPS with other measures of approach (the BAS), withdrawal (BIS), and affect (the BDI). Based on prior research (Gooding and Pflum, 2014b; Gooding et al., 2016, 2021), we expected the Korean version of the ACIPS to be associated with a measure of approach and reward sensitivity (i.e., the BAS) and withdrawal (the BIS) and inversely associated with a measure of negative affect (the BDI). No other a priori predictions were made.

The main goal of this study was to validate the Korean translation of the ACIPS for use with Korean-speaking groups. This study provides the first evidence of cross-cultural validity of the ACIPS in a Korean-speaking context. Specifically, the results of the present study demonstrate that the adult version of the ACIPS could be successfully adapted from American English to Korean with semantic, linguistic, and contextual equivalence.

Our results revealed that the Korean translation of the adult version of the ACIPS had good internal consistency, as evidenced by the ordinal alpha coefficient. Results of exploratory factor analysis indicated a three-factor solution, namely, interaction in the context of close relationships, casual interactions, and family-related interactions. This factor structure is consistent with prior results of factor analyses conducted on different translations of the ACIPS. Overall, it appears that the ACIPS taps various types of social and interpersonal pleasure, including casual and intimate social interactions. It also appears that the factors include both anticipatory and consummatory items, rather than the ACIPS scale being subdivided into anticipatory and consummatory subdomains by factor analysis.

We did not observe any age effects on total ACIPS scores. However, there was not a large age range in the sample. Surprisingly, we did not observe any sex difference in the present sample. In prior reports based on adult samples, female respondents reported higher levels of social and interpersonal pleasure than males, regardless of age, or proportion of males in the sample. This pattern of sex difference was observed in American samples (Gooding et al., 2015), Spanish samples (Gooding et al., 2016), and Chinese samples (Chan et al., 2016). It is unclear whether the lack of sex differences in this Korean sample reflects a more “non-traditional” attitude toward gender roles in Korea (Choe, 2017) or whether it reflects a greater likelihood of a dampening of social pleasure amongst our female respondents.

In terms of total ACIPS mean scores, we observed lower mean scores in our Korean sample compared to other community-based adult samples, whether in the US (Bedwell et al., 2014; Gooding et al., 2015) or in China (Liang et al., 2020). We tried to identify reasons for the apparent differences in the mean total ACIPS scores. The differences in total mean scores cannot be attributed to differences in mode of survey administration (i.e., online versus in-person survey administration) because Gooding et al. (2015) used a similar mode of survey administration as the present study. One potential source of difference between the mean total ACIPS scores of the present sample (68.78 ± 15.17), the American sample of 305 adults (79.36 ± 13.40), and the Chinese sample of 74 adults (M = 74.1 ± 12.04) is the fact that our data collection occurred in the midst of the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic. This global epidemic may have had a dampening effect on the collective joie de vivre of an entire population. Indeed, it will be important to conduct further investigations of non-patient community-derived adults to determine whether these findings of relatively lowered total ACIPS scores reflect something about the sample itself or whether they reflect a cohort effect.

The Korean translation of the ACIPS displayed good construct validity. The total ACIPS scores were positively associated with total BAS scores, consistent with prior findings based on English versions of the measures (Gooding and Pflum, 2014a,b). The ACIPS was inversely associated with the BDI-II, consistent with a prior finding based on the Spanish version of ACIPS (Gooding et al., 2016). In the Spanish sample, participants who reported no or few depressive symptoms had significantly higher total ACIPS scores than those who reported moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms (Gooding et al., 2016). In terms of convergent validity, we expected that the ACIPS would be more closely related to measures of approach activation (i.e., the BAS) and inversely associated with scales that included direct measurement of anhedonia (i.e., the BDI) compared to measures of inhibition (i.e., the BIS).

Our results indicated that the ACIPS showed good construct validity in the Korean population. Future directions include using the Korean translation of the ACIPS to elucidate the varying degrees of hedonic capacity in patients with psychiatric disorders.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committees of the Pusan National University at Yangsan Hospital Institutional Review Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

TL and DG designed the research and critically revised the article for important intellectual content. DG conceptualized and developed the scale. EK and TL acquired the data. EK, TL, and DG analyzed and interpreted the data. EK drafted the first version of the manuscript. All authors approved the final version for publication, agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work by ensuring that any questions related to its accuracy and integrity can be appropriately investigated and resolved.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.