Individual differences in affective, cognitive, and neural responses to interpersonal and social motivation: Novel methodological perspectives
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Stavrou, Maria. 2022. Individual differences in affective, cognitive, and neural responses to interpersonal and social motivation: Novel methodological perspectives. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (Individual differences in affective, cognitive, and neural responses to interpersonal and social motivation: Novel methodological perspectives)
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Abstract or Description
Research in this thesis manipulated approach motivation via social / interpersonal incentives, to measure the effects on mood and learning of social perceptions via neural, behavioural and psychometric measures, while also interrogating how these effects might be moderated by personality. Two initial studies explored whether motivational videos work as appetitive mood inductions by inducing activated affect. These studies also tested an online line bisection task as an index of left frontal activation, which putatively represents approach motivation and activated affect. On average, compared with control videos, motivational videos induced changes specific to activated affect without inducing changes in pleasant affect. However, there was considerable heterogeneity across participants in the induced mood changes, but without clear-cut relationships between these changes and personality (extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness were tested as possible moderators). Line bisection was not affected by motivational videos relative to control videos. The third study replaced line bisection with an EEG measure of approach motivation (i.e., frontal alpha asymmetry, FAA). Measuring EEG itself was likely mood altering and complicated the pattern of mood changes observed. The expected mood induction effects were not found, although FAA did unexpectedly increase significantly after watching the control video. The final two studies evaluated probabilistic reinforcement learning in a social context via a novel artificial social interaction (ASI) task using on-screen faces of characters who varied in the amount of social reward (smiles) they gave. The reinforcing characters who smiled more throughout the ASI were rated as more likely to be befriended, more likeable, more extraverted, more agreeable, and less neurotic than the non-reinforcing characters who smiled less. These studies also showed that the participants extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and autistic traits significantly moderated the character reinforcement effects on the social perception measures listed above. The methods used throughout this thesis show that considerable promise and solid foundations now exist for future developments in both areas of research.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Identification Number (DOI): |
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| Keywords: |
individual differences; social reward processing; dopamine; left frontal activation; bayesian model selection; approach motivation; social reinforcement learning |
| Departments, Centres and Research Units: |
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| Date: |
30 April 2022 |
| Item ID: |
31761 |
| Date Deposited: |
06 May 2022 13:36 |
| Last Modified: |
07 Sep 2022 17:19 |
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URI: |
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