title: From Affective Experience to Motivated Action: Tracking Reward-Seeking and Punishment-Avoidant Behaviour in Real-Life.
abstract: Many of the decisions and actions in everyday life result from implicit learning processes. Important to psychopathology are, for example, implicit reward-seeking and punishment-avoidant learning processes. It is known that when specific actions get associated with a rewarding experience, such as positive emotions, that this will increase the likelihood that an organism will engage in similar actions in the future. Similarly, when actions get associated with punishing experiences, such as negative emotions, this may reduce the likelihood that the organism will engage in similar actions in the future. This study examines whether we can observe these implicit processes prospectively in the flow of daily life. If such processes take place then we expect that current behaviour can be predicted by how similar behaviour was experienced (in terms of positive and negative affect) at previous measurement moments. This was examined in a sample of 621 female individuals that had participated in an Experience Sampling data collection. Measures of affect and behaviour were collected at 10 semi-random moments of the day for 5 consecutive days. It was examined whether affective experience that was paired with certain behaviours (physical activity and social context) at previous measurements modified the likelihood to show similar behaviours at next measurement moments. Analyses were performed both at the level of observations (a time scale with units of ± 90 min) and at day level (a time scale with units of 24 h). As expected, we found that affect indeed moderated the extent to which previous behaviour predicted similar behaviour later in time, at both beep- and day-level. This study showed that it is feasible to track reward-seeking and punishment-avoidant behaviour prospectively in humans in the flow of daily life. This opens up a new toolbox to examine processes determining goal-oriented behaviour in relation to psychopathology in humans.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, South Limburg Mental Health Research and Teaching Network, EURON, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Interdisciplinary Center for Psychopathology and Emotion regulation (ICPE), department of Psychiatry, University medical center Groningen (UMCG), Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marieke
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wichers
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, South Limburg Mental Health Research and Teaching Network, EURON, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Zuzana
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Kasanova
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, South Limburg Mental Health Research and Teaching Network, EURON, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jindra
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bakker
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, University Hospital Ghent, Ghent, Belgium; Department of Neurology, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Evert
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Thiery
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium; Department of Human Genetics, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Derom
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Open University of the Netherlands, P.O box 2960, 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nele
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, South Limburg Mental Health Research and Teaching Network, EURON, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Os
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019369:Life; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011599:Psychopathology; D011678:Punishment; D012201:Reward; D055815:Young Adult