Passage-of-Time Dysphoria: A Highly Replicable Decline in Mood During Rest and Simple Tasks that is Moderated by Depression

Does our mood change as time passes, and is this change different in people with depression? These questions are central to affective neuroscience theory and methodology, yet they remain largely unexamined. Here we demonstrate that rest periods lowered participants' mood, an effect we call "passage-of-time dysphoria." This finding was replicated in 15 cohorts totaling 27,882 adult and adolescent participants. The dysphoria was (1) relatively large (13.8% after 7.3 minutes, Cohen’s d = 0.574), (2) variable across and within individuals but consistent across cohorts, and (3) present during simple visuomotor and gambling tasks. Rest also impacted behaviour: participants were less likely to gamble at the beginning of a task if it was preceded by rest. The dysphoria was inversely related to depression risk and a computationally estimated reward sensitivity parameter. Our results have theoretical implications for the nature of mood and its aberrations, and methodological consequences for the design and interpretation of experiments.