Abstract
Social motivation is a subjective state which is rather difficult to quantify. It has sometimes been conceptualised as “behavioural effort” to seek social contact. Two paradigms: approach–avoidance (AA) and choose a movie (CAM), based on the same conceptualisation, have been used to measure social motivation in people with and without autism. However, in absence of a direct comparison, it is hard to know which of these paradigms has higher sensitivity in estimating preference for social over non-social stimuli. Here we compare these two tasks for their utility in (1) evaluating social seeking in typical people and (2) identifying the influence of autistic traits on social motivation. Our results suggest that CAM reveals a clear preference for social stimuli over non-social in typical adults but AA fails to do so. Also, social seeking measured with CAM but not AA has a negative relationship between autistic traits.
Highlights
Motivation has been defined as a drive to reduce the negative outcome or increase the positive outcome by acting on the environment (Hill 1963), as a biological mechanism to maintain the homeostasis (Hull 1943), or as an adjustment of opponent processes (Solomon 1980)
Social motivation is defined as “a set of psychological dispositions and biological mechanisms biasing the individual to preferentially orient to the social world, to seek and take pleasure in social interactions, and to work to foster and maintain social bonds” (Chevallier et al 2012, p. 2), as this definition suggests social interactions are inherently rewarding for typical people, they make an effort to seek social contacts
We compare two paradigms the approach–avoidance (AA) paradigm and the choose a movie (CAM) paradigm for their sensitivity to measure social seeking opposed to non-social stimuli
Summary
Motivation has been defined as a drive to reduce the negative outcome or increase the positive outcome by acting on the environment (Hill 1963), as a biological mechanism to maintain the homeostasis (Hull 1943), or as an adjustment of opponent processes (Solomon 1980) In most of these definitions, motivation is seen as an internal state which results in behavioural activation. 2), as this definition suggests social interactions are inherently rewarding for typical people, they make an effort to seek social contacts This means that the “behavioural effort” or “seeking actions” of the person can give an estimate of his/her subjective state of motivation.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
