Revised Physical Anhedonia Scale (RPAS)

Sixty-one true-or-false statements describe enjoyment, or its absence, in physical and sensory experience: the taste of food, the feeling of the sun or a cool breeze, the beauty of a sunset, music, dancing, physical affection and sex. A person with physical anhedonia might find that foods all taste much the same, that a warm bath gives little pleasure, or that physical closeness is more neutral than pleasant.

Chapman, Chapman and Raulin (1976) developed the scales for physical and social anhedonia following Meehl (1962), who regarded a reduced capacity for pleasure as a core feature of vulnerability to schizophrenia. Physical anhedonia has since been studied in relation to schizophrenia spectrum conditions and to depression, where loss of pleasure is also central.

Statements answered in the anhedonic direction are counted. Higher totals describe a more pervasive reduction in sensory and physical enjoyment; lower totals describe ordinary enjoyment of the senses. Because the scale describes a stable disposition, it differs from the temporary loss of pleasure during a depressive episode, although the two can occur together.

The scale is used in research on schizotypy, depression and reward processing, and in clinical assessment by professionals. On this site, the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale describes reduced pleasure in social contact, the PHQ-9 asks about recent loss of interest, and the Isolation, Withdrawal, and Detachment Scale includes an anhedonia scale.

The scale is clinician-administered on this platform and its elevation is a research indicator, not a clinical determination.

The Physical Anhedonia Scale measures a reduced ability to feel pleasure from physical and sensory experiences, and it loads on the negative schizotypy factor of the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales (Chapman et al., 1976; Kwapil et al., 2008).

Negative schizotypy is separate from the positive schizotypy measured by perceptual aberration and magical ideation, and it relates to social withdrawal and flat affect rather than to unusual beliefs (Kwapil et al., 2008). Physical anhedonia is related to, but distinct from, social anhedonia, which predicted later schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in a longitudinal study (Kwapil, 1998).

“I have usually found lovemaking to be intensely pleasurable.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.