Anhedonia Test (SHAPS)

Anhedonia - from the Greek for 'without pleasure' - describes a fading of the capacity to enjoy things that once felt rewarding. The concept has a long history in psychology, but it was Robert Snaith, Max Hamilton, and their colleagues at the University of Leeds who gave clinicians a brief, practical way to measure it. Their Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 1995, asks people to rate how much pleasure they would take in a set of ordinary experiences, from a favorite meal to the company of friends. Its simplicity made it a standard tool: the SHAPS has since been used in hundreds of studies of mood, motivation, and reward.

This test profiles everyday pleasure across three areas. Lost interests captures whether hobbies, entertainment, and personal projects still absorb and reward you, or whether they have gone flat. Social numbness reflects how much warmth you actually feel around the people who matter to you - whether praise, good company, and shared laughter still land. Dulled senses covers the body's small pleasures: food, drink, warmth, music, scent, and scenery. All three facets are scored in the same direction, so higher scores mean more blunting, and they are averaged into a single Total Anhedonia score shown as a percentage. The statements here are worded originally for this test and span the same three domains the SHAPS covers.

Research gives anhedonia a central place in mental health. It is one of the two core symptoms of a major depressive episode, and studies using the SHAPS and similar measures link persistent loss of pleasure to differences in the brain's reward circuitry. Anhedonia also appears outside depression - in schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, and substance withdrawal - and research suggests it predicts how people respond to treatment, which is one reason clinicians track it separately rather than folding it into a general mood score. Importantly, hedonic capacity also varies in the healthy population: some blunting can follow stress, exhaustion, or burnout without amounting to a disorder.

Alongside your own bars, the chart marks estimated comparison values for a typical adult. Community samples answering the original SHAPS overwhelmingly report intact pleasure - most people endorse enjoying most of the listed experiences - so the typical adult lands low on every facet here, with a Total Anhedonia around 21%. These markers are approximations rescaled from published research samples, not validated percentile norms for this exact test, so treat them as a rough point of reference rather than a precise ranking of where you stand.

A high score is not a diagnosis, and a low score is not a clean bill of emotional health. Pleasure fluctuates with sleep, stress, medication, season, and circumstance, and a stretch of flatness often passes on its own. That said, anhedonia is worth taking seriously: if little has felt enjoyable for weeks, if the numbness extends to people and activities you love, or if it arrives with low mood, hopelessness, or thoughts of self-harm, please speak with a doctor or a qualified mental health professional. Loss of pleasure responds to treatment, and describing it clearly - which areas have gone quiet, and how much - is a genuinely useful first step.

This test is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a diagnostic instrument and cannot determine whether you have depression or any other condition. The test is based on the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale but uses its own items and is not affiliated with Snaith, Hamilton, their co-authors, or the University of Leeds.

References

• Snaith, R. P., Hamilton, M., Morley, S., Humayan, A., Hargreaves, D., & Trigwell, P. (1995). A scale for the assessment of hedonic tone: The Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale. British Journal of Psychiatry, 167(1), 99-103.
• Treadway, M. T., & Zald, D. H. (2011). Reconsidering anhedonia in depression: Lessons from translational neuroscience. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(3), 537-555.