Manipulating affective state influences conditioned appetitive responses

ABSTRACT

Affective states influence how individuals process information and behave. Some theories predict emotional congruency effects (e.g. preferential processing of negative information in negative affective states). Emotional congruency should theoretically obstruct the learning of reward associations (appetitive learning) and their ability to guide behaviour under negative mood. Two studies tested the effects of the induction of a negative affective state on appetitive Pavlovian learning, in which neutral stimuli were associated with chocolate (Experiment 1) or alcohol (Experiment 2) rewards. In both experiments, participants showed enhanced approach tendencies towards predictors of reward after a negative relative to a positive performance feedback manipulation. This increase was related to a reduction in positive affect in Experiment 1 only. No effects of the manipulation on conditioned reward expectancies, craving, or consumption were observed. Overall, our findings support the idea of counter-regulation, rather than emotional congruency effects. Negative affective states might therefore serve as a vulnerability factor for addiction, through increasing conditioned approach tendencies.

KEYWORDS:

• Appetitive learning
• reward
• mood
• approach tendencies
• attentional bias

Acknowledgements

We thank Johanna Furch and Sophie van der Spek for collecting the data for these experiments, Bert Molenkamp for technical assistance and Dinska Van Gucht for providing us with her experimental protocol.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Tom Beckers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9581-1505

Notes

1 Calculations on the raw data of Van Gucht et al. (2008, Experiment 1) yield an effect size of  = .21 for the difference in the AAT effect between a group tested in the acquisition context, which exhibited a significant AAT effect, and a group that was tested in an extinction context and exhibited an attenuated, non-significant AAT effect. With the present sample size, the power to obtain a between-groups difference in AAT effect of a similar size (which is statistically equivalent to a Cue x Response x Condition interaction in the current design), using α = .05, equals .97 (This power calculation and others reported in the present manuscript were conducted using G*Power 3.1, see Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007).

2 Sleep was not assessed in Experiment 1, but was assessed in Experiment 2, since testing sessions occurred in the late afternoons and early evenings.

3 This interaction became significant when the individuals with excessive error rates were included in the sample.

4 In Experiment 1, we gave participants pieces of their favourite kind of chocolate, which they had indicated during the screening procedure; we did not measure their subjective liking of the chocolate.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by Innovation Scheme (Vidi) [grant number 452-09-001] from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) awarded to Tom Beckers. The funding source had no involvement in the study design, the collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, the writing of the report, nor in the decision to submit the article for publication.