Abstract
We aimed to predict how hard subjects work for financial rewards from their general trait and state reward-motivation. We specifically asked 1) whether individuals high in general trait “reward responsiveness” work harder 2) whether task-irrelevant cues can make people work harder, by increasing general motivation. Each trial of our task contained a 1 second earning interval in which male subjects earned money for each button press. This was preceded by one of three predictive cues: an erotic picture of a woman, a man, or a geometric figure. We found that individuals high in trait “reward responsiveness” worked harder and earned more, irrespective of the predictive cue. Because female predictive cues are more rewarding, we expected them to increase general motivation in our male subjects and invigorate work, but found a more complex pattern.
Highlights
Several classical psychological theories assume that two basic brain systems motivate behavior: one responds to potential punishment/frustration, the other to potential reward/relief [1,2,3,4]
‘‘reward responsiveness’’ significantly predicted higher baseline work-rate (p~0:04, ^t12~0:04, n~52), but not their differential work-rate faced with different cues
We found that subjects with higher self-reported ‘‘reward responsiveness’’ worked harder for money at baseline, but incidental reward cues did not have a greater influence on their work rate
Summary
Several classical psychological theories assume that two basic brain systems motivate behavior: one responds to potential punishment/frustration, the other to potential reward/relief [1,2,3,4]. We measured the energy of reward-seeking behavior in terms of the rate of work for financial rewards and aimed to predict this from subjects’ trait and state reward motivation We measured the former with a standard questionaire measure of ‘‘reward responsiveness’’ [11]. We wondered whether task-irrelevant sexual cues could influence general motivation to work for seperate financial rewards in a task without discrete choices. This question arises from classical empirical work [15] and recent theoretical work [16] which has documented two aspects of motivation. The second, less intuitive, aspect is a general level of invigoration: such motivation should non- increase work, even in a task without discrete choices, i.e. not a standard ‘‘decision-making task’’
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