Varieties of instrumental theories of emotional action: commentary on "a perceptual control theory of emotional action".

Eder proposes a theory of action causation based on Powers' control theory and Hommel's theory of event coding in which emotional feelings play a crucial role. After presenting a rough description of Eder's theory in which I try to spell out the various steps in the control cycle, I compare his theory to my own goal-directed theory. The two theories converge in that they (a) rely on a control cycle in which different states are compared and (b) emphasise the instrumental or goal-directed nature of emotional actions. Points of divergence include the content of the representations involved in the control cycle and the meaning and role of feelings.

Chasing consistency: On the measurement error in self-reported affect in experiments.

How feelings change over time is a central topic in emotion research. To study these affective fluctuations, researchers often ask participants to repeatedly indicate how they feel on a self-report rating scale. Despite widespread recognition that this kind of data is subject to measurement error, the extent of this error remains an open question. Complementing many daily-life studies, this study aimed to investigate this question in an experimental setting. In such a setting, multiple trials follow each other at a fast pace, forcing experimenters to use a limited number of questions to measure affect during each trial. A total of 1398 participants completed a probabilistic reward task in which they were unknowingly presented with the same string of outcomes multiple times throughout the study. This allowed us to assess the test-retest consistency of their affective responses to the rating scales under investigation. We then compared these consistencies across different types of rating scales in hopes of finding out whether a given type of scale led to a greater consistency of affective measurements. Overall, we found moderate to good consistency of the affective measurements. Surprisingly, however, we found no differences in consistency across rating scales, which suggests that the specific rating scale that is used does not influence the measurement consistency.

A value accumulation account of unhealthy food choices: testing the influence of outcome salience under varying time constraints.

People often engage in unhealthy eating despite having an explicit goal to follow a healthy diet, especially under certain conditions such as a lack of time. A promising explanation from the value accumulation account is that food choices are based on the sequential consideration of the values of multiple outcomes, such as health and taste outcomes. Unhealthy choices may result if taste is considered before health. We examined whether making a health outcome more salient could alter this order, thereby leading to more healthy choices even under time pressure. Two studies examined the time-dependent effect of outcome values and salience on food choices. Participants first completed priming trials on which they rated food items on healthiness (health condition), tastiness (taste condition), or both healthiness and tastiness (control condition). They then completed blocks of binary choice trials between healthy and tasty items. The available response time was manipulated continuously in Study 1 (N = 161) and categorically in Study 2 (N = 318). As predicted, results showed that the values of health and taste outcomes influenced choices and that priming led to more choices in line with the primed outcomes even when time was scarce. We did not obtain support for the prediction that the priming effect is time-dependent in the sense that primed outcomes are considered before non-primed outcomes. Together, these findings suggest that increasing the value and salience of a health outcome may be effective ways to increase healthy choices, even under poor conditions such as time pressure.

Reasons to Remain Critical About the Literature on Habits: A Commentary on Wood et al. (2022).

Wood et al. (2022) reviewed arguments in support of the idea that much of human behavior is habitual. In this commentary, we first point at ambiguities in the way Wood et al. referred to habits. This allows us to clarify the question that lies at the core of the debate on habits: To what extent is habitual behavior mediated by stimulus-response associations or by goal representations? We then argue that Wood et al. dismissed goal-directed explanations of habitual behavior too easily. Finally, we point out that Wood et al.'s reanalysis of our data is misleading in that a more fine-grained analysis supports rather than questions goal-directed accounts.

A goal-directed account of action slips: The reliance on old contingencies.

People often keep engaging in behaviors that used to be successful in the past but which are knowingly no longer effective in the current situation, so-called "action slips." Such action slips are often explained with stimulus-driven processes in which behavior is caused by a stimulus-response association and without information about the outcome of the behavior. This process is contrasted with a goal-directed process in which behavior is selected because it is expected to lead to a desired outcome. Failing to act in line with changes in the outcome is taken as evidence for stimulus-driven processes. Stimulus-driven processes are assumed to get installed after overtraining and to be deployed under poor operating conditions. In line with this, previous research has found that action slips are more likely to occur after extensive training and when under time pressure. We propose an alternative goal-directed explanation according to which action slips are caused by a goal-directed process that relies on old, no longer accurate, outcome information. In the current study, participants learned four stimulus-response-outcome contingencies during a single (i.e., moderate training) or a 4-day training schedule (i.e., extensive training). Afterward, two contingencies were reversed and performance was assessed under time pressure. Results show that after extensive training, participants not only committed more action slips but also reported more old response-outcome contingencies in line with these action slips. This is consistent with the goal-directed explanation that action slips result from a reliance on old, no longer accurate outcome information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of goal-directed and habitual processes in food consumption under stress after outcome devaluation with taste aversion.

People are more likely to engage in various suboptimal behaviors such as overeating, addictive behaviors, and short-sighted financial decision-making when they are under stress. Traditional dual-process models propose that stress can impair the ability to engage in goal-directed behavior so that people have to rely on habitual behavior. Support for this idea comes from a study by Schwabe and Wolf (2010), in which stressed participants continued to perform a learned instrumental behavior leading to a liquid after the liquid was devalued with a satiation procedure. Based on these findings, suboptimal behavior under stress is often seen as habitual. In the present study, we conducted a conceptual replication of the study by Schwabe and Wolf (2010). Instead of using a satiation procedure to achieve the outcome devaluation, we devalued outcomes through taste aversion. We did not replicate the pattern of findings by Schwabe and Wolf (2010). Our results indicate instead that stressed participants were sensitive to outcome values when the outcomes became truly aversive and hence that their behavior was goal-directed. This suggests either that (a) habitual processes are subject to boundary conditions or (b) the processes responsible for the findings of Schwabe and Wolf (2010) were never habitual to begin with. This may have far-reaching implications for explaining suboptimal behavior under stress in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Stimulus-Driven Affective Change: Evaluating Computational Models of Affect Dynamics in Conjunction with Input.

The way in which emotional experiences change over time can be studied through the use of computational models. An important question with regard to such models is which characteristics of the data a model should account for in order to adequately describe these data. Recently, attention has been drawn on the potential importance of nonlinearity as a characteristic of affect dynamics. However, this conclusion was reached through the use of experience sampling data in which no information was available about the context in which affect was measured. However, affective stimuli may induce some or all of the observed nonlinearity. This raises the question of whether computational models of affect dynamics should account for nonlinearity, or whether they just need to account for the affective stimuli a person encounters. To investigate this question, we used a probabilistic reward task in which participants either won or lost money at each trial. A number of plausible ways in which the experimental stimuli played a role were considered and applied to the nonlinear Affective Ising Model (AIM) and the linear Bounded Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (BOU) model. In order to reach a conclusion, the relative and absolute performance of these models were assessed. Results suggest that some of the observed nonlinearity could indeed be attributed to the experimental stimuli. However, not all nonlinearity was accounted for by these stimuli, suggesting that nonlinearity may present an inherent feature of affect dynamics. As such, nonlinearity should ideally be accounted for in the computational models of affect dynamics. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00118-5.

Behavior prediction requires implicit measures of stimulus-goal discrepancies and expected utilities of behavior options rather than of attitudes toward objects.

Meta-analyses show low correlations between implicit attitude measures and behavior measures, suggesting that these attitude measures are weak predictors of behavior. Researchers of implicit cognition have resorted to several rescue strategies. Their most important reply, based on a traditional dual-process theory of behavior causation, is that attitudes toward objects (positive/negative) automatically activate specific action tendencies (approach/avoidance), but that this stimulus-driven process can be overruled by a nonautomatic goal-directed process in which the expected utilities of action options are weighed up. According to such a theory, it makes sense to continue measuring attitudes with implicit measures, but research should also take into account the moderating role of goals and other factors. We propose an alternative dual-process theory in which goal-directed processes can also be automatic and count as the most important cause of behavior. According to this theory, the goal-directed process responsible for action selection is further preceded by the detection of a stimulus-goal discrepancy. Based on this alternative theory, we propose to no longer measure attitudes toward objects but rather to measure (a) the magnitude of stimulus-goal discrepancies as well as (b) the expected utility of the behavior at stake, understood as the product of the values of the outcomes of the behavior, and the behavior-outcome expectancies. Here too, implicit measures are needed because people may not always have conscious access to these constructs or be motivated to disclose them. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Theory and Methods Psychology > Emotion and Motivation Psychology > Reasoning and Decision Making.

The goal-directed model as an alternative to reductionist and network approaches of psychopathology.

As an alternative to biological reductionist and network approaches to psychopathology, we propose a nonreductionist mental-mechanistic approach. To illustrate this approach, we work out the implications of the goal-directed framework of Moors et al., which has the potential to explain the heterogeneous manifestations of psychopathology with a restricted set of broad theoretical principles.

Behavioral Reluctance in Adopting Open Access Publishing: Insights From a Goal-Directed Perspective.

Despite growing awareness of the benefits of large-scale open access publishing, individual researchers seem reluctant to adopt this behavior, thereby slowing down the evolution toward a new scientific culture. We outline and apply a goal-directed framework of behavior causation to shed light on this type of behavioral reluctance and to organize and suggest possible intervention strategies. The framework explains behavior as the result of a cycle of events starting with the detection of a discrepancy between a goal and a status quo and the selection of behavior to reduce this discrepancy. We list various factors that may hinder this cycle and thus contribute to behavioral reluctance. After that, we highlight potential remedies to address each of the identified barriers. We thereby hope to point out new ways to think about behavioral reluctances in general, and in relation to open access publishing in particular.

Testing a computational model of subjective well-being: a preregistered replication of Rutledge et al. (2014).

Subjective well-being changes over time. While the causes of these changes have been investigated extensively, few attempts have been made to capture these changes through computational modelling. One notable exception is the study by Rutledge et al. [Rutledge, R. B., Skandali, N., Dayan, P., & Dolan, R. J. (2014). A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(33), 12252-12257. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1407535111], in which a model that captures momentary changes in subjective well-being was proposed. The model incorporates how an individual processes rewards and punishments in a decision context. Using this model, the authors were able to successfully explain fluctuations in subjective well-being observed in a gambling paradigm. Although Rutledge et al. reported an in-paper replication, a successful independent replication would further increase the credibility of their results. In this paper, we report a preregistered close replication of the behavioural experiment and analyses by Rutledge et al. The results of Rutledge et al. were mostly confirmed, providing further evidence for the role of rewards and punishments in subjective well-being fluctuations. Additionally, the association between personality traits and the way people process rewards and punishments was examined. No evidence for such associations was found, leaving this an open question for future research.

Support from a TMS/MEP study for a direct link between positive/negative stimuli and approach/avoidance tendencies.

Previous behavioral studies using stimulus-response compatibility tasks have shown that people are faster to carry out instructed approach/avoidance responses to positive/negative stimuli. This result has been taken as evidence that positive/negative stimulus valence directly activates a tendency to approach/avoid, which in turn, facilitates execution of instructed approach/avoidance behavior. In these studies, however, it cannot be excluded that the results reflect a purely semantic link between stimulus valence and instructed responses. According to this alternative interpretation, positive/negative stimuli do not elicit an approach/avoidance tendency, but instead they interact with the positive/negative valence of the instructed responses, and in this way, produce the observed compatibility effect. To circumvent this possible disadvantage of compatibility tasks, we used a novel method for the measurement of early action tendencies: TMS induced MEPs. In two experiments, participants were first trained to abduct the index finger to approach and the thumb to avoid. Then, they observed a series of positive and negative stimuli. Each stimulus was followed by a TMS pulse (at 400 ms post-stimulus onset) and MEPs were measured continuously on the muscles of both fingers. These observation trials were randomly intermixed with response trials, in which neutral stimuli were presented and participants were instructed to approach/avoid the stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants received clear visual feedback on the outcome of their response in the response trials. In Experiment 2, we omitted this feedback to test whether it was necessary for the effect to occur. The results indicated higher MEPs for the approach/avoidance finger after positive/negative stimuli in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2. Analyses on the data aggregated over both experiments suggest that the visual feedback was necessary for stimulus valence to elicit action tendencies. Taken together, the results are in line with the results of behavioral studies with compatibility tasks, suggesting that stimulus valence directly elicits specific action tendencies already at 400 ms but they indicate that clear visual feedback is necessary for this effect to occur.

Neurophysiological evidence for evaluative feedback processing depending on goal relevance.

Feedback signaling the success or failure of actions is readily exploited to implement goal-directed behavior. Two event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have been identified as reliable markers of evaluative feedback processing: the Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and the P3. Recent ERP studies have shown a substantial reduction of these components when the feedback's goal relevance (in terms of goal informativeness) was decreased. However, it remains unclear whether this lowering of evaluative feedback processing at the FRN and P3 levels (i) reflects a common regulation process operating across them or (ii) indirectly and mostly depends on valence processing. To address these questions, 44 participants performed a time estimation task wherein the perceived goal relevance of the feedback following each decision was manipulated via instructions in different blocks. We recorded 64-channel EEG and collected subjective ratings of feedback valence and relevance, separately for goal-relevant and irrelevant conditions. ERP results showed a substantial reduction of the FRN and P3 components for irrelevant than relevant feedback, despite the balanced task relevance between them. Moreover, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed that these two successive ERP effects had dissociable spatiotemporal properties. Crucially, a multivariate multiple regression analysis revealed that goal relevance per se, but not valence, was the unique significant predictor of the amplitude reduction of the FRN and P3 when the feedback was goal irrelevant. Our results suggest that although these ERP components exhibit non-overlapping spatiotemporal properties and performance monitoring effects, they can both be modulated by a common, valence-unspecific process related to goal relevance.

Early Approach and Avoidance Tendencies can be Goal-Directed: Support from a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study.

Dual-process models with a default-interventionist architecture explain early emotional action tendencies by a stimulus-driven process, and they allow goal-directed processes to intervene only in a later stage. An alternative dual-process model with a parallel-competitive architecture developed by Moors, Boddez, and De Houwer (Emotion Review, 9(4), 310-318, 2017), in contrast, explains early emotional action tendencies by a goal-directed process. This model proposes that stimulus-driven and goal-directed processes often operate in parallel and compete with each other, and that if they do compete, the goal-directed process often wins the competition. To examine these predictions, we set up a goal-directed process in an experimental group by rewarding participants for avoiding positive stimuli and for approaching negative stimuli and punishing them for the opposite behavior. We expected this process to compete with a potentially preexisting stimulus-driven process in which positive stimuli are associated with approach and negative stimuli with avoidance. We compared the elicited action tendencies of participants in this group with a control group in which only the stimulus-driven process could operate. Early approach and avoidance tendencies were assessed via motor evoked potentials (MEP) measured in the finger muscles previously trained to approach or to avoid stimuli after single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) delivered at 400 ms. Results confirmed that positive/negative stimuli led to stronger avoidance/approach tendencies in the experimental group but not to approach/avoidance tendencies in the control group. This suggests that goal-directed processes are indeed able to determine relatively early emotional action tendencies, but it does not show that goal-directed process can defeat stimulus-driven processes.

Tackling fear: Beyond associative memory activation as the only determinant of fear responding.

For decades already, the human fear conditioning paradigm has been used to study and develop treatments for anxiety disorders. This research is guided by theoretical assumptions that, in some cases indirectly, stem from the tradition of association formation models (e.g., the Rescorla-Wagner model). We argue that one of these assumptions - fear responding as a monotonic function of the associative activation of aversive memory representations - restricts the types of treatment that the research community currently considers. We discuss the importance of this assumption in the context of research on extinction-enhancing and reconsolidation interference techniques. While acknowledging the merit of this research, we argue that unstrapping the straitjacket of this assumption can lead to exploring new directions for utilizing fear conditioning procedures in treatment research. We discuss two determinants of fear responding other than associative memory activation. First, fear responding might also depend on relational information. Second, a recent goal-directed emotion theory suggests that goals might be the primary determinant of the response pattern characterized as fear.

The influence of threat on perceived spatial distance to out-group members.

A classic example of discriminatory behavior is keeping spatial distance from an out-group member. To explain this social behavior, the literature offers two alternative theoretical options that we label as the "threat hypothesis" and the "shared-experience hypothesis". The former relies on studies showing that out-group members create a sense of alertness. Consequently, potentially threatening out-group members are represented as spatially close allowing the prevention of costly errors. The latter hypothesis suggests that the observation of out-group members reduces the sharing of somatosensory experiences and, thus, increases the perceived physical distance between oneself and others. In the present paper, we pitted the two hypotheses against each other. In Experiment 1, Caucasian participants expressed multiple implicit "Near/Far" spatial categorization judgments from a Black-African Avatar and a White-Caucasian Avatar located in a 3D environment. Results indicate that the Black-African Avatar was categorized as closer to oneself, as compared with the White-Caucasian Avatar, providing support for "the threat hypothesis". In Experiment 2, we tested to which degree perceived threat contributes to this categorization bias by manipulating the avatar's perceived threat orthogonally to group membership. The results indicate that irrespective of group membership, threatening avatars were categorized as being closer to oneself as compared with no threatening avatars. This suggests that provided information about a person and not the mere group membership influences perceived distance to the person.

When the outcome is different than expected: Subjective expectancy shapes reward prediction error at the FRN level.

Converging evidence in human electrophysiology suggests that evaluative feedback provided during performance monitoring (PM) elicits two distinctive and successive ERP components: the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the P3b. Whereas the FRN has previously been linked to reward prediction error (RPE), the P3b has been conceived as reflecting motivational or attentional processes following the early processing of the RPE, including action value updating. However, it remains unclear whether these two consecutive neurophysiological effects depend on the direction of the unexpectedness (better- or worse-than-expected outcomes; signed RPE) or instead only on the degree of unexpectedness irrespective of direction (i.e., unsigned RPE). To address this question, we devised an experiment in which we manipulated the objective reward probability and the subjective reward expectancy (via instructions) in a factorial within-subject design and explored amplitude changes of the FRN and the P3b. A 64-channel EEG was recorded while 32 participants performed a speeded go/no-go task in which evaluative feedback based on the reward probability either violated expectancy (thereby creating a RPE) or did not. This violation corresponded either to better- or worse-than-expected events. Results showed that the FRN was larger when RPE occurred than when it did not, but irrespective of the direction of this violation. Interestingly, in these two conditions, action value was updated for the positive feedback selectively, as shown by the P3b amplitude. These results obey a two-stage model of PM assuming that unsigned RPE is first rapidly detected (FRN level) before the positive feedback's value is updated selectively (P3b effect).

The role of stimulus-driven versus goal-directed processes in fight and flight tendencies measured with motor evoked potentials induced by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

This study examines two contrasting explanations for early tendencies to fight and flee. According to a stimulus-driven explanation, goal-incompatible stimuli that are easy/difficult to control lead to the tendency to fight/flee. According to a goal-directed explanation, on the other hand, the tendency to fight/flee occurs when the expected utility of fighting/fleeing is the highest. Participants did a computer task in which they were confronted with goal-incompatible stimuli that were (a) easy to control and fighting had the highest expected utility, (b) easy to control and fleeing had the highest expected utility, and (c) difficult to control and fleeing and fighting had zero expected utility. After participants were trained to use one hand to fight and another hand to flee, they either had to choose a response or merely observe the stimuli. During the observation trials, single-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) was applied to the primary motor cortex 450 ms post-stimulus onset and motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) were measured from the hand muscles. Results showed that participants chose to fight/flee when the expected utility of fighting/fleeing was the highest, and that they responded late when the expected utility of both responses was low. They also showed larger MEPs for the right/left hand when the expected utility of fighting/fleeing was the highest. This result can be interpreted as support for the goal-directed account, but only if it is assumed that we were unable to override the presumed natural mapping between hand (right/left) and response (fight/flight).