Social reward shapes attentional biases

Abstract

Paying attention to stimuli that predict a reward outcome is important for an organism to survive and thrive. When visual stimuli are associated with tangible, extrinsic rewards such as money or food, these stimuli acquire high attentional priority and come to automatically capture attention. In humans and other primates, however, many behaviors are not motivated directly by such extrinsic rewards, but rather by the social feedback that results from performing those behaviors. In the present study, I examine whether positive social feedback can similarly influence attentional bias. The results show that stimuli previously associated with a high probability of positive social feedback elicit value-driven attentional capture, much like stimuli associated with extrinsic rewards. Unlike with extrinsic rewards, however, such stimuli also influence task-specific motivation. My findings offer a potential mechanism by which social reward shapes the information that we prioritize when perceiving the world around us.

KEYWORDS:

• Selective attention
• Social feedback
• Reward learning

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is grateful to M. DiBartolo and M. Chiu for assistance with data collection, and to M. Chiu for assistance with generating the experimental stimuli.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant number R01-DA013165].