Date Approved

8-25-2025

Embargo Period

8-25-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. Clinical Psychology

Department

Clinical Psychology

College

College of Science & Mathematics

Advisor

Thomas Dinzeo, Ph.D.

Committee Member 1

Steven Brunwasser, Ph.D.

Committee Member 2

Tenelle Porter, Ph.D.

Keywords

health behaviors;motivation;pleasure;reward processing;schizophrenia;schizotypy

Disciplines

Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

Motivational and hedonic deficits are not well studied in schizotypy as they relate to health behaviors. Nonclinical undergraduate participants (n= 247) completed self-report measures and a behavioral task (EEfRT) that assessed effort cost decision making. Social anhedonia was positively associated with increased effort but simultaneously reduced responsiveness to increasing rewards, indicating inefficient effort allocation. Consummatory pleasure was the more relevant hedonic predictor of effort, rather than anticipatory pleasure. In exploratory analyses, higher positive schizotypy scores were significantly associated with greater consummatory pleasure, while disorganized schizotypy was unrelated to pleasure indices or effort performance. In secondary hypothesis analyses, all schizotypy traits and consummatory pleasure were significantly associated with poorer sleep. Disorganized schizotypy predicted worse health and exercise. Findings suggest that hedonic and motivational disruptions may emerge early in the psychosis spectrum, but behavioral tasks like the EEfRT may have a limited ability to capture real-world variance in health behaviors.

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