An official website of the United States government
Abstract Motivation is often thought to enhance adaptive decision-making by biasing actions toward rewards and away from punishment. Emerging evidence, however, points to a more nuanced view whereby motivation can both enhance and impair different aspects of decision-making. Model-based approaches have gained prominence over the past decade for developing more precise mechanistic explanations for how incentives impact goal-directed behavior. In this Special Focus, we highlight three studies that demonstrate how computational frameworks help decompose decision processes into constituent cognitive components, as well as formalize when and how motivational factors (e.g., monetary rewards) influence specific cognitive processes, decision-making strategies, and self-report measures. Finally, I conclude with a provocative suggestion based on recent advances in the field: that organisms do not merely seek to maximize the expected value of extrinsic incentives. Instead, they may be optimizing decision-making to achieve a desired internal state (e.g., homeostasis, effort, affect). Future investigation into such internal processes will be a fruitful endeavor for unlocking the cognitive, computational, and neural mechanisms of motivated decision-making.
more »
« less
Dissociable influences of reward and punishment on adaptive cognitive control
To invest effort into any cognitive task, people must be sufficiently motivated. Whereas prior research has focused primarily on how the cognitive control required to complete these tasks is motivated by the potential rewards for success, it is also known that control investment can be equally motivated by the potential negative consequence for failure. Previous theoretical and experimental work has yet to examine how positive and negative incentives differentially influence the manner and intensity with which people allocate control. Here, we develop and test a normative model of control allocation under conditions of varying positive and negative performance incentives. Our model predicts, and our empirical findings confirm, that rewards for success and punishment for failure should differentially influence adjustments to the evidence accumulation rate versus response threshold, respectively. This dissociation further enabled us to infer how motivated a given person was by the consequences of success versus failure.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2046111
- PAR ID:
- 10336974
- Editor(s):
- Ahn, Woo-Young
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLOS Computational Biology
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 1553-7358
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e1009737
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
To understand how people vary in their cognitive control engagement, researchers use different laboratory tasks and compare performance on trials that are more versus less control-demanding (e.g., congruency effects). However, previous research has struggled to uncover consistent patterns of correlation across cognitive control tasks, leading to questions about the utility of these tasks and the existence of task-general control. The current study sought to test whether these validity concerns may center on the stimulus-driven nature of congruency effects, rather than the tasks themselves. To overcome this obstacle, we varied task incentives while holding stimulus features constant. We show both theoretically and empirically that the effects of incentives on control allocation correlate across tasks. Together, findings support task-general control processes that operate across different contexts.more » « less
-
Abstract Challenging goals can induce harder work but also greater stress, in turn potentially undermining goal achievement. We sought to examine how mental effort and subjective experiences thereof interact as a function of the challenge level and the size of the incentives at stake. Participants performed a task that rewarded individual units of effort investment (correctly performed Stroop trials) but only if they met a threshold number of correct trials within a fixed time interval (challenge level). We varied this challenge level (Study 1, n = 40) and the rewards at stake (Study 2, n = 79) and measured variability in task performance and self-reported affect across task intervals. Greater challenge and higher rewards facilitated greater effort investment but also induced greater stress, whereas higher rewards (and lower challenge) simultaneously induced greater positive affect. Within intervals, we observed an initial speed up then slowdown in performance, which could reflect dynamic reconfiguration of control. Collectively, these findings further our understanding of the influence of task demands and incentives on mental effort exertion and well-being.more » « less
-
Punishment regulates selfish behaviors and maintains cooperation. However, because punishment imposes costs on another person, it could also harm relationships. The current work asked how punishment shapes 5- to 10-year-olds' (Study 1; n=128) and adults' (Study 2; n=159) attitudes toward punishers and those who receive punishment as well as their inferences about relationships between punishers and targets. We reasoned that the motives underlying punishment might shape evaluations; punishments motivated by prosocial desires may elicit more positive responses than punishments motivated by antisocial desires. We tested both motives that were external to the punisher (the behavior that elicited the punishment) as well as internal motives (the desire to harm versus rehabilitate transgressors). The main result is that we found negative social relationships among punishers, targets, and observers. Both children and adults preferred punishers who inflicted punishment for behaviors that violated (versus did not violate) norms, preferred targets of punishment who had not (versus had) violated norms, and expected punishers and targets to dislike each other. External motives, but not internal motives, consistently influenced participants’ own social preferences. In contrast, neither external nor internal motives consistently shaped participants' inferences about social relationships between punishers and their targets. Our work contributes to social cognitive development by clarifying how motives shape children's and adults' understanding of social relationships.more » « less
-
Abstract Therapies focused on lucid dreaming could be useful for treating various sleep disorders and other conditions. Still, one major roadblock is the paucity of systematic information on the consequences of attempting these sorts of dreams. The current study sought to quantify positive and negative aspects of seeking lucid dreams, describe their phenomenology in detail, and identify features associated with positive or negative experiences. Observational data from a massive lucid-dream discussion forum were analyzed to capture lucid-dreaming themes. Forum posts were independently rated on multiple dimensions hypothesized to contribute to the valence of lucidity-related phenomena. Our results revealed that lucid dreams can end nightmares and prevent their recurrence, but they can also induce harrowing dysphoric dreams. The realization of dreaming (lucidity) and dreams with high-control were both associated with positive experiences. We translated our results into a process model that describes the progression from lucid dream induction to waking benefit, identifying potential areas of concern. Our results and model suggest that negative outcomes primarily result from failed induction attempts or lucid dreams with low dream control, and that successfully inducing high-control lucid dreams poses low risk for negative outcomes. Lucid dreaming has valuable therapeutic and recreational potential, but a better understanding of the risks is required. Our findings provide new insights into possible negative repercussions and how to avoid them in future applications.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009737
