We recruited participants aged 18 to 65, fluent in English, with normal or corrected to normal vision, through campus advertising at the University of Bath. As depression severity is positively skewed within the general population (Tomitaka et al., 2015), to ensure balanced levels of depression we screened participants using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9; Kroenke et al., 2001). We recruited an equal number of participants with no depression (PHQ-9 less than or equal to 4), mild depression (PHQ-9 5-9) and moderate to severe depression (PHQ-9 greater than or equal to 10). 

Participants  completed self-report depression measures (PHQ-9, BDI-II) across two sessions approximately one week apart. We measured self, emotion, and reward processing, separately and in combination, using three cognitive tasks. This included simple associative learning task, a self-esteem go/no-go task, and a social evaluation learning task.