Measuring social motivation using signal detection and reward responsiveness
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Recent trends in psychiatry have emphasized the need for a shift from categorical to dimensional approaches. Of critical importance to this transformation is the availability of tools to objectively quantify behaviors dimensionally. The present study focuses on social motivation, a dimension of behavior that is central to a range of psychiatric conditions but for which a particularly small number of assays currently exist. METHODS: In Study 1 (N = 48), healthy adults completed a monetary reward task and a social reward task, followed by completion of the Chapman Physical and Social Anhedonia Scales. In Study 2 (N = 26), an independent sample was recruited to assess the robustness of Study 1's findings. RESULTS: The reward tasks were analyzed using signal detection theory to quantify how much reward cues bias participants' responses. In both Study 1 and Study 2, social anhedonia scores were negatively correlated with change in response bias in the social reward task but not in the monetary reward task. A median split on social anhedonia scores confirmed that participants with high social anhedonia showed less change in response bias in the social reward task compared to participants with low social anhedonia. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms that social anhedonia selectively affects how much an individual changes their behavior based on the presence of socially rewarding cues and establishes a tool to quantify social reward responsiveness dimensionally.
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During reward paradigms, people expressing higher levels of social anhedonia change their responding style less in reaction to social, but not monetary, rewards.
“When examining the learning component, during reward paradigms, people expressing higher levels of social anhedonia changed their responding style less in reaction to social, but not monetary, rewards (60, 61), demonstrating less favorable responses to social cues than would be expected.”
From A transdiagnostic perspective on social anhedonia (2019) · cites this paper as [60]
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“Other studies did use social and non-social stimuli in this probabilistic reward task, but did not compare their effects with each other (Chevallier et al., 2016), or statistically eliminated the impact of monetary vs. social praise feedback on task outcomes (Janes et al., 2015).”
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- Authors
- Chevallier, C., Tonge, N., Safra, L., Kahn, D., Kohls, G., Miller, J., & Schultz, R. T.
- Affiliations
- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (US)
- Inserm (FR)
- RWTH Aachen University (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Chevallier, Coralie
- ORCID
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2016-12-01
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- e0167024
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5132309
- OpenAlex
- W2557880642
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 4
- FWCI
- 3.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- RWTH Publications (RWTH Aachen) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Pennsylvania Department of Health (SAP # 4100047863)
- Fondation Roger de Spoelberch
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-0001-02 PSL*, ANR-10-LABX-0087)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- social motivation, social anhedonia, social reward, monetary rewards, response bias, signal detection theory, dimensional assessment, reward responsiveness
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Cues, Female, Humans, Male, Motivation, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Reaction Time, Research Design, Reward, Anhedonia
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