Associations between individual differences in approach motivation and effort-based task performance

Abstract

Approach motivation is of interest to multiple domains of psychology and the principal method of assessing this construct is self-report. However, there are multiple behavioral measures available to assess approach motivation. More work is needed to examine the validity of these tasks. In this study, we examined the progressive ratio (PR) task and effort expenditure for rewards task (EEfRT). We examined how PR task parameters influenced performance; associations between self-report measures of approach motivation and behavioral performance; and associations between behavioral task performance. Overall, the results showed that PR task performance was impacted based on the magnitude of ratio increases. We found some associations between self-report and PR task and EEfRT performance of modest effect size. We also found associations between task performance, but only when EEfRT performance was based on high probability reward trials. Overall, this study provides preliminary convergent validity of these behavioral measures for assessing approach motivation.