Depressive adolescent girls exhibit atypical social decision-making in an iterative trust game

Interpersonal trust behavior is an important target for the identification and treatment of psychiatric disorders with interpersonal dysfunction. Adolescent depression is a highly interpersonal disorder marked by impaired social interactions. However, trust has received little empirical attention. The examination of reward-related decision-making using behavioral economic methods is a relatively novel approach for studying trust in adolescent depression. The present study employed a modified trust game to examine whether depressive adolescents exhibited perturbed reward-related decision-making in social and/or nonsocial contexts.

One-hundred and thirty adolescent girls (65 depressive, 65 healthy comparisons) played a modified trust game under two conditions, interpersonal risk-taking (trust) and general risk-taking (lottery), and completed self-report psychopathology measures.

Three-way repeated measures ANCOVA analyses revealed a significant group x game interaction such that while the depressive group invested more across trials in the trust game they invested similarly to healthy comparisons in the lottery condition.

Findings highlight the interpersonal nature of adolescent depression. Future research may help determine whether increased trust behavior is characteristic of depression in adolescent girls. Behavioral economic games, like the trust game, may serve as valuable therapeutic tools for improving social interaction style among depressive adolescents.