Pre-registered Analyses Research Articles

No cardiac phase bias for threat-related distance perception under naturalistic conditions in immersive virtual reality.

Previous studies have found that threatening stimuli are more readily perceived and more intensely experienced when presented during cardiac systole compared with diastole. Also, threatening stimuli are judged as physically closer than neutral ones. In a pre-registered study, we tested these effects and their interaction using a naturalistic (interactive and three-dimensional) experimental design in immersive virtual reality: we briefly displayed threatening and non-threatening animals (four each) at varying distances (1.5-5.5 m) to a group of young, healthy participants (n = 41) while recording their electrocardiograms (ECGs). Participants then pointed to the location where they had seen the animal (approx. 29 000 trials in total). Our pre-registered analyses indicated that perceived distances to both threatening and non-threatening animals did not differ significantly between cardiac phases-with Bayesian analysis supporting the null hypothesis. There was also no evidence for an association between subjective fear and perceived proximity to threatening animals. These results contrast with previous findings that used verbal or declarative distance measures in less naturalistic experimental conditions. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the cardiac phase-related variation in threat processing may not generalize across different paradigms and may be less relevant in naturalistic scenarios than under more abstract experimental conditions.

Longitudinal Associations Between Scripted Attachment Representations in Late Adolescence and Depression in Adulthood in a Normative and a Higher-Risk Cohort

Attachment representations are increasingly operationalized as secure base script knowledge—one’s level of awareness of the temporal-causal schema that summarizes basic features of seeking and receiving effective support from caregivers when in distress. A method was recently developed to assess secure base script knowledge during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAIsbs), though its predictive validity for mental health outcomes is largely unknown. A series of pre-registered analyses, leveraging two large, longitudinal cohorts to assess the associations between AAIsbs and depression in emerging adults revealed that higher AAIsbs at age 18 years in the normative-risk sample, but not in a higher-risk cohort, predicted fewer depressive symptoms at age 30 years. In general, these associations were robust to concurrent depressive symptoms, sociodemographic and cognitive functioning covariates, and other traditional attachment representation measures. Findings support the importance of considering schematic attachment representations in developing interventions to improve young adults’ well-being.

Prenatal environment is associated with the pace of cortical network development over the first three years of life

Environmental influences on brain structure and function during early development have been well-characterized, but whether early environments are associated with the pace of brain development is not clear. In pre-registered analyses, we use flexible non-linear models to test the theory that prenatal disadvantage is associated with differences in trajectories of intrinsic brain network development from birth to three years (n = 261). Prenatal disadvantage was assessed using a latent factor of socioeconomic disadvantage that included measures of mother’s income-to-needs ratio, educational attainment, area deprivation index, insurance status, and nutrition. We find that prenatal disadvantage is associated with developmental increases in cortical network segregation, with neonates and toddlers with greater exposure to prenatal disadvantage showing a steeper increase in cortical network segregation with age, consistent with accelerated network development. Associations between prenatal disadvantage and cortical network segregation occur at the local scale and conform to a sensorimotor-association hierarchy of cortical organization. Disadvantage-associated differences in cortical network segregation are associated with language abilities at two years, such that lower segregation is associated with improved language abilities. These results shed light on associations between the early environment and trajectories of cortical development.

Placebo treatment affects brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, but not nociceptive pain

Drug treatments for pain often do not outperform placebo, and a better understanding of placebo mechanisms is needed to improve treatment development and clinical practice. In a large-scale fMRI study (N = 392) with pre-registered analyses, we tested whether placebo analgesic treatment modulates nociceptive processes, and whether its effects generalize from conditioned to unconditioned pain modalities. Placebo treatment caused robust analgesia in conditioned thermal pain that generalized to unconditioned mechanical pain. However, placebo did not decrease pain-related fMRI activity in brain measures linked to nociceptive pain, including the Neurologic Pain Signature (NPS) and spinothalamic pathway regions, with strong support for null effects in Bayes Factor analyses. In addition, surprisingly, placebo increased activity in some spinothalamic regions for unconditioned mechanical pain. In contrast, placebo reduced activity in a neuromarker associated with higher-level contributions to pain, the Stimulus Intensity Independent Pain Signature (SIIPS), and affected activity in brain regions related to motivation and value, in both pain modalities. Individual differences in behavioral analgesia were correlated with neural changes in both modalities. Our results indicate that cognitive and affective processes primarily drive placebo analgesia, and show the potential of neuromarkers for separating treatment influences on nociception from influences on evaluative processes.

An experimental investigation into the effect of negative affect on the behavioral economic demand for alcohol.

It is hypothesized that alcohol use is reinforcing when used as a strategy to cope with negative affect. Although the evidence for this hypothesis in observational data is weak, some experimental evidence suggests that the behavioral economic demand for alcohol increases immediately following a negative emotional event. We hypothesized that people show a higher demand for alcohol following negative (vs. neutral) mood inductions and that this effect is stronger in people who report heavier drinking compared to people who report lighter drinking as well as stronger on days characterized by higher coping motives and negative urgency. 309 college students who reported recent alcohol consumption (MAUDIT = 6.86) completed the alcohol purchase task after being subjected to 12 mood inductions (six negative, six neutral, order randomized) on 12 separate days. In our preregistered analyses, we found no evidence that the behavioral economic demand for alcohol was elevated following negative mood inductions. The mood inductions in our study were not as strong as has been reported in previous research, weakening the preregistered inferences. In exploratory analyses performed on a subset of the data in which the mood inductions worked as intended, demand was higher following negative mood inductions. The results of this study are not conclusive. In light of previous research, we consider these data to slightly increase our confidence that demand for alcohol is increased immediately following a negative emotional event. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A general exposome factor explains individual differences in functional brain network topography and cognition in youth

Childhood environments are critical in shaping cognitive neurodevelopment. With the increasing availability of large-scale neuroimaging datasets with deep phenotyping of childhood environments, we can now build upon prior studies that have considered relationships between one or a handful of environmental and neuroimaging features at a time. Here, we characterize the combined effects of hundreds of inter-connected and co-occurring features of a child’s environment (“exposome”) and investigate associations with each child’s unique, multidimensional pattern of functional brain network organization (“functional topography”) and cognition. We apply data-driven computational models to measure the exposome and define personalized functional brain networks in pre-registered analyses. Across matched discovery (n=5139, 48.5% female) and replication (n=5137, 47.1% female) samples from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the exposome was associated with current (ages 9–10) and future (ages 11–12) cognition. Changes in the exposome were also associated with changes in cognition after accounting for baseline scores. Cross-validated ridge regressions revealed that the exposome is reflected in functional topography and can predict performance across cognitive domains. Importantly, a single measure capturing a child’s exposome could more accurately and parsimoniously predict cognition than a wealth of personalized neuroimaging data, highlighting the importance of children’s complex, multidimensional environments in cognitive neurodevelopment.

Threats to social safety and neuro-inflammatory mechanisms underlying sexual orientation disparities in depression symptom severity: A prospective cohort study of young adults

Sexual minority individuals have a markedly elevated risk of depression compared to heterosexuals. We examined early threats to social safety and chronically elevated inflammation as mechanisms contributing to this disparity in depression symptoms, and compared the relative strength of the co-occurrence between chronic inflammation and depression symptoms for sexual minorities versus heterosexuals. To do so, we analyzed data from a prospective cohort of sexual minority and heterosexual young adults (n = 595), recruited from a nationally representative sample, that included assessments of early threats to social safety in the form of adverse childhood interpersonal events, three biomarkers of inflammation (i.e., CRP, IL-6, TNF-α) measured at two time points, and depression symptoms over four years. In pre-registered analyses, we found that sexual minorities experienced more adverse childhood interpersonal events, were more likely to display chronically elevated inflammation, and reported more severe depression symptoms than heterosexuals. Adverse childhood interpersonal events and chronically elevated inflammation explained approximately 23 % of the total effect of the association between sexual orientation and depression symptom severity. Further, there was an increased coupling of chronically elevated inflammation and depression symptoms among sexual minorities compared to heterosexuals. These results provide novel longitudinal, population-based evidence for the role of chronically elevated inflammation in linking threats to social safety during childhood with depression symptom severity in young adulthood, consistent with the primary tenets of the social signal transduction theory of depression. Our study extends this theory to the population level by finding that members of a stigmatized population (i.e., sexual minorities) experience a greater risk of depression because of their greater exposure to adverse childhood interpersonal events and the subsequent link to chronic inflammation, highlighting potential biopsychosocial intervention targets.

Effectiveness of a smartphone app (Drink Less) versus usual digital care for reducing alcohol consumption among increasing-and-higher-risk adult drinkers in the UK: a two-arm, parallel-group, double-blind, randomised controlled trial

Digital interventions, including apps and websites, can be effective for reducing alcohol consumption. However, many are not evidence- or theory-informed and have not been evaluated. We tested the effectiveness of the Drink Less app for reducing alcohol consumption compared with usual digital care in the UK. In this two-arm, parallel group, double-blind, randomised controlled trial, we enrolled increasing-and-higher-risk drinkers (AUDIT ≥ 8) in the UK, who were motivated to reduce their alcohol consumption and willing to use a digital intervention to do so, via online methods. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1), using an online algorithm, to receive a web link to download the Drink Less app (intervention) or to the NHS alcohol advice webpage (usual digital care). Researchers were masked to group allocation. Participants were followed up at one, three and six months. The primary outcome was self-reported weekly alcohol consumption at six months, adjusting for baseline consumption. The full analytic sample was used in most analyses, though missing data was treated in different ways. The primary, pre-registered intention-to-treat analysis assumed baseline-carried-forwards. Secondary pre-registered analyses also focused on the full analytic sample and used alternatives including multiple imputation and last observation carried forwards. This trial is registered with the ISRCTN registry, ISRCTN64052601. Between 07/13/2020 and 03/29/2022, 5602 people were randomly assigned to the Drink Less app (n=2788) or comparator (n=2814) groups. Six-month follow-up rates were 79% and 80%, respectively. The primary pre-registered conservative intention-to-treat approach assuming non-responders were drinking at baseline levels of consumption, found a non-significant greater reduction of 0.98 units in weekly alcohol consumption in the intervention group at 6-month follow-up (95% CI-2.67 to 0.70). The data were insensitive to detect the hypothesised effect (Bayes factor=1.17). Data were not missing completely at random, with 6-month follow-up rates differing in terms of education, occupation, and income. We therefore conducted the pre-registered sensitivity analysis using multiple imputation, showing that the Drink Less app resulted in a 2.00-unit greater weekly reduction at 6-month follow-up compared with the NHS alcohol advice webpage (95% CI-3.76 to-0.24). Fewer than 0.1% of participants in both arms who responded to one, three or six-month follow-up reported adverse events linked to participation in the trial. The Drink Less app may be effective in reducing the alcohol consumption in increasing-and-higher-risk drinkers motivated to reduce their consumption. NIHR Public Health Research Programme.

Buckets of fun: Impacts of fraction ball activities on students' math-related emotions

Rational number learning can cause frustration and negative emotions for elementary school students. Fraction Ball, a play-based math intervention, allows students to actively learn rational numbers through engaging and interactive activities. Based on a cluster-randomized trial with 16 teachers and 360 students, our pre-registered analyses showed moderate positive impacts of Fraction Ball on overall students' self-reported math-related emotions. Exploratory analyses indicated that students with higher negative emotions at pretest showed larger experimental impacts on decreasing negative emotions at posttest. Finally, we found that Fraction Ball evidenced no trade-off between rational number learning and emotional outcomes at the classroom block level, indicating that positive learning gains in rational number skills were associated with increases in positive emotions and decreases in negative emotions.

Prevalence, Inequalities, and Impact of Bullying in Adolescence: Insights from the #BeeWell Study

AbstractMeasurement is fundamental to understanding and preventing bullying, but approaches in the field are inconsistent, producing much conflicting evidence. We illustrate this by demonstrating the sensitivity of findings to researcher-led analytical decisions (exposure threshold and type(s) of bullying considered) in a study addressing the following aims: (i) to determine the prevalence of bullying; (ii) to establish the nature and extent of inequalities in bullying exposure between different socio-demographic groups; (iii) to examine the relationship between bullying exposure and internalising symptoms; and (iv) to establish if this relationship varies between socio-demographic groups. Adolescents aged 12–15 (N = 35,825) attending 147 secondary schools in the #BeeWell study completed measures of bullying and internalising mental health difficulties. These data were linked to information on their socio-demographic characteristics (e.g. socio-economic disadvantage). A series of pre-registered analyses were undertaken. With regard to the first aim, the prevalence of bullying victimisation was found to range between 5 and 16%. In relation to the second aim, disparities in exposure to bullying were consistently found among gender and sexual minorities (vs cisgender heterosexual boys), those with special educational needs (vs those without special educational needs), younger students (vs older students), and those from more disadvantaged neighbourhoods (vs those from less disadvantaged neighbourhoods), irrespective of the bullying exposure threshold or type being considered. However, disparities among cisgender heterosexual girls (vs cisgender heterosexual boys) and ethnic minority groups (vs White students) varied by exposure threshold and type of bullying. Pertaining to the third aim, the population attributable fraction for the association between bullying exposure and internalising symptoms was found to range between 6 and 19%, with the odds ratio ranging between 3.55 and 4.20. Finally, in terms of the fourth aim, there was limited evidence that the magnitude of the impact of bullying victimisation varied across socio-demographic subgroups, except that bullying exposure was more strongly associated with internalising symptoms among LGBTQ+ young people and cisgender heterosexual girls (vs cisgender heterosexual boys), and less strongly associated with internalising symptoms among Black students (vs White students). Our findings speak to the importance of developing more consistent measurement practices in bullying research, with consequent implications for prevention and intervention. These implications are contextualised by consideration of study strengths and limitations.

Self-control is associated with health-relevant disparities in buccal DNA-methylation measures of biological aging in older adults

Self-control is a personality dimension that is associated with better physical health and a longer lifespan. Here, we examined (1) whether self-control is associated with buccal and saliva DNA-methylation (DNAm) measures of biological aging quantified in children, adolescents, and adults, and (2) whether biological aging measured in buccal DNAm is associated with self-reported health. Following preregistered analyses, we computed two DNAm measures of advanced biological age (principal-component PhenoAge and GrimAge Acceleration) and a DNAm measure of pace of aging (DunedinPACE) in buccal samples from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (SOEP-G[ene], n = 1058, age range 0–72, Mage = 42.65) and saliva samples from the Texas Twin Project (TTP, n = 1327, age range 8–20, Mage = 13.50). We found that lower self-control was associated with advanced biological age in older adults (PhenoAge Acceleration β = − .34, [− .51, − .17], p < .001; GrimAge Acceleration β = − .34, [− .49, − .19], p < .001), but not young adults, adolescents or children. These associations remained statistically robust even after correcting for possible confounders such as socioeconomic contexts, BMI, or genetic correlates of low self-control. Moreover, a faster pace of aging and advanced biological age measured in buccal DNAm were associated with self-reported disease (PhenoAge Acceleration: β = .13 [.06, .19], p < .001; GrimAge Acceleration: β = .19 [.12, .26], p < .001; DunedinPACE: β = .09 [.02, .17], p = .01). However, effect sizes were weaker than observations in blood, suggesting that customization of DNAm aging measures to buccal and saliva tissues may be necessary. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that self-control is associated with health via pathways that accelerate biological aging in older adults.

COVID-19 on mind: Daily worry about the coronavirus is linked to negative affect experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming.

Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people's spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19-related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry are associated with the daily fluctuation of the affective quality of mind-wandering and dreaming, and to what extent these associations can be explained by poor sleep quality. We used ecological momentary assessment by asking participants to rate the affect they experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming in daily logs over a 2-week period. Our preregistered analyses based on 1,755 dream logs from 172 individuals and 1,496 mind-wandering logs from 152 individuals showed that, on days when people reported higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect during mind-wandering, they experienced more worry. Only daily sleep quality was associated with affect experienced during dreaming at the within-person level: on nights with poorer sleep quality people reported experiencing more negative and less positive affect in dreams and were more likely to experience nightmares. However, at the between-person level, individuals who experienced more daily COVID-19 worry during the study period also reported experiencing more negative affect during mind-wandering and during dreaming. As such, the continuity between daily and nightly experiences seems to rely more on stable trait-like individual differences in affective processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Social support and adaptive emotion regulation: Links between social network measures, emotion regulation strategy use, and health.

Social support, as perceived and experienced within one's social network, has been associated with greater well-being and favorable health outcomes. The transition to college marks a critical time in which social support not only strengthens interpersonal bonds, but also may help an individual discover and utilize various coping strategies to lower risks associated with negative emotions, which may result in better health and well-being. In the present study, we collected data from a large sample of undergraduate students (N = 376) and conducted preregistered analyses to examine links between students' perceived social support in residential college communities, patterns of emotion regulation strategy use, and multiple indicators of health and well-being. Overall, we found partial support for our hypotheses, with some associations between social support and patterns of emotion regulation strategy use, as well as associations between strategy use and health indicators. All results held when adjusting for participants' age and gender. Taken together, the present findings revealed reliable links between social network indicators, emotion regulation strategy use, and health. Future research can extend these findings by observing how these relationships unfold over time, to better understand how people manage their emotions by drawing on their personal networks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Diminished diversity-of-thought in a standard large language model

We test whether large language models (LLMs) can be used to simulate human participants in social-science studies. To do this, we ran replications of 14 studies from the Many Labs 2 replication project with OpenAI’s text-davinci-003 model, colloquially known as GPT-3.5. Based on our pre-registered analyses, we find that among the eight studies we could analyse, our GPT sample replicated 37.5% of the original results and 37.5% of the Many Labs 2 results. However, we were unable to analyse the remaining six studies due to an unexpected phenomenon we call the “correct answer” effect. Different runs of GPT-3.5 answered nuanced questions probing political orientation, economic preference, judgement, and moral philosophy with zero or near-zero variation in responses: with the supposedly “correct answer.” In one exploratory follow-up study, we found that a “correct answer” was robust to changing the demographic details that precede the prompt. In another, we found that most but not all “correct answers” were robust to changing the order of answer choices. One of our most striking findings occurred in our replication of the Moral Foundations Theory survey results, where we found GPT-3.5 identifying as a political conservative in 99.6% of the cases, and as a liberal in 99.3% of the cases in the reverse-order condition. However, both self-reported ‘GPT conservatives’ and ‘GPT liberals’ showed right-leaning moral foundations. Our results cast doubts on the validity of using LLMs as a general replacement for human participants in the social sciences. Our results also raise concerns that a hypothetical AI-led future may be subject to a diminished diversity of thought.

Fluency generating emotion words correlates with verbal measures but not emotion regulation, alexithymia, or depressive symptoms.

How do you feel? To answer this question, one must first think of potential emotion words before choosing the best fit. However, we have little insight into how the ability to rapidly bring to mind emotion words-emotion fluency-relates to emotion functioning or general verbal abilities. In this study, we measured emotion fluency by counting how many emotion words participants could generate in 60 s. Participants (N = 151 in 2011-2012) also completed a behavioral measure of verbal fluency (i.e., how many words starting with "P" or "J" participants could produce in 60 s), a cognitive reappraisal emotion regulation task, and emotion functioning questionnaires. In preregistered analyses, we found that participants produced more negative emotion words than positive words and more positive words than neutral words in the emotion fluency task. As hypothesized, emotion fluency was positively related to verbal fluency, but contrary to hypotheses, emotion fluency was not related to self-reported or task-based emotion functioning (e.g., alexithymia, depression, and emotion regulation ability). As such, in community samples, emotion fluency may reflect general cognitive abilities rather than processes crucial to emotional well-being. While emotion fluency as measured here does not track indices of well-being, future research is needed to investigate potential contexts in which verbal fluency for emotion words may be key to emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Social media use does not increase individual-based relative deprivation: Evidence from a five-year RI-CLPM

Although a growing literature demonstrates that social media usage fosters upward social comparisons, the potential for social media use to elicit perceptions of unjust disadvantage relative to others remains unexplored. We address this oversight by leveraging six annual waves of a nationwide random probability sample of adults (ages 18–99; N = 62,017) to examine the average between- and within-person associations between social media use and feelings of individual-based relative deprivation (IRD) over time. Results from our preregistered analyses revealed that those who are high social media users across time tend to also experience higher levels of IRD. After adjusting for these stable between-person differences, within-person changes in social media use failed to predict changes in IRD over time (or vice versa). Subsequent exploratory analyses replicated these results across different age- and gender-based subgroups. Our results relieve concerns that social media use fosters long-term perceptions of disadvantage over time within individuals and suggest that concerns over the long-term detrimental effects of social media use on social comparison processes may be unfounded. These results also highlight the need to separate between-person stability from within-person change when investigating temporal precedence in longitudinal research.

Restricting social networking site use for one week produces varied effects on mood but does not increase explicit or implicit desires to use SNSs: Findings from an ecological momentary assessment study.

Recent research on the addictive potential of modern technologies such as the internet, smartphones, or social networking sites (SNSs) has suggested that emotional and motivational changes associated with the sudden discontinuation of engagement with the technology mirror the aversive consequences seen when drug use is ceased abruptly. This has been observed even in moderate users and interpreted as a manifestation of withdrawal, an important marker of physical dependence in substance use disorders. On the other hand, a growing literature emphasises the positive effects of "digital detox" on mental health and well-being. Using a battery of affective and motivational measures, both explicit and implicit, the present study tracked the effects of a week of significantly reduced SNS use in moderate to heavy SNS users (N = 51). Our pre-registered analyses showed that the intervention elicited affective changes neither consistent with a general withdrawal syndrome (i.e., increased negative affect and cravings) nor with a general beneficial effect on well-being: While our data indicated some abstinence-related decreases of negative affect and boredom, they also showed a reduction of positive affect. These changes occurred regardless of problematic/addictive use behaviours. Importantly, restricting SNS use for one week had no effect on implicit measures of SNS use motivation (i.e., approach biases, time distortion and effort expenditure for SNS access) nor did it influence explicit cravings and SNS cue-reactivity. Together our findings suggest that restricting SNS use has nuanced and potentially offsetting effects on well-being. These could arise because use reduction may concurrently remove experiences that trigger negative emotions (e.g., upward social comparisons or Fear of Missing Out) but also those that elicit positive emotions (e.g., social approval). The hypothesised lack of a net effect on well-being would be consistent with our finding that voluntary reduction of SNS use does not mitigate or exacerbate SNS-related urges.

A transdiagnostic, dimensional classification of anxiety shows improved parsimony and predictive noninferiority to DSM.

The current conceptualization of anxiety in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)-which includes 11 anxiety disorders plus additional anxiety-related conditions-does not align with accumulating evidence that anxiety is transdiagnostic and dimensional in nature. Transdiagnostic dimensional anxiety models have been proposed, yet they measure anxiety at either a very broad (e.g., "anxiety") or very narrow (e.g., "performance anxiety") level, overlooking intermediate properties of anxiety that cut across DSM disorders. Using indicators from a well-validated semistructured interview of anxiety-related disorders, we constructed intermediate-level transdiagnostic dimensions representing the intensity, avoidance, pervasiveness, and onset of anxiety. We captured these content-agnostic dimensions in a sample representing varying levels and forms of anxiety (N = 268), including individuals with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, separation anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (n = 205) and individuals with no psychopathology (n = 63). In preregistered analyses, our dimensional anxiety model showed noninferiority to DSM-5 diagnoses in predicting concurrent and prospective measures of anxiety-related impairment, anxiety vulnerabilities, comorbid depression, and suicidal ideation. These results held regardless of whether the dimensions were combined into a single composite or retained as separate components. Our transdiagnostic dimensional model offers meaningful gains in parsimony over DSM, with no loss of predictive power. This project provides a methodological framework for the empirical evaluation of other transdiagnostic dimensional models of psychopathology that have been proposed as alternatives to the DSM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Modeling the value-based decision to consume alcohol in response to emotional experiences.

Evidence for negative reinforcement of alcohol use is mixed; one possible explanation for this is that people make value-based decisions whether to regulate their emotions via alcohol or an alternative, and only drink-to-cope when alcohol's reinforcing value is larger than that of available alternatives. If this is the case, immediately following a negative emotional event, the value for alcohol should increase primarily in heavy drinkers, whereas in light drinkers, alternative ways of coping should be valued. We conducted a preregistered online experiment (N = 200) with a mixed design (between: heavy vs. light drinker; within: negative/neutral/positive mood induction). In each of three experimental sessions, participants first provided value ratings for a set of alcohol and food stimuli. Second, they were subjected to a mood induction. Third, they made forced choices between either two alcohol or food stimuli. We then applied a drift-diffusion model to these data and tested whether alcohol- and food-related decision-making parameters are differentially affected following the mood inductions in heavy and light drinkers. In preregistered analyses, we found that heavy drinkers did not value alcohol more but valued food less after the negative mood induction. Exploratory analyses uncovered that both heavy- and light-drinking participants valued alcohol more following the negative mood induction if they reported high alcohol craving at the start of the session. Collectively, these results provide some evidence for the idea that drinking-to-cope might be a value-based decision-making process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of time ambiguity on choice depends on delay and amount magnitude

AbstractTime ambiguity—that is, having partially/fully incomplete information about when an outcome will occur—is common in everyday life. A recent study showed that participants preferred options with time‐exact delays over options with time‐ambiguous delays, a phenomenon they called time‐ambiguity aversion. However, the empirical robustness and boundaries of this phenomenon remain unexplored. We conducted three online studies: Study 2 (n = 118) was a replication of Study 1 (n = 76) using preregistered analyses; Study 3 (n = 202; preregistered) was a follow‐up study suggested during review. In Studies 1 and 2, participants completed hypothetical choices between €5 today versus later‐but‐larger (LL) rewards that systematically varied in their amount, delay, and time‐ambiguity level (e.g., for a 180 day delay, time ambiguity varied from 179 to 181 to 0–360 days). Effects of time ambiguity on choice were best encoded in an absolute, dose‐dependent manner and depended on delays and amounts: Increasing time ambiguity led to more time‐exact LL choices at shorter delays but more time‐ambiguous LL choices at longer delays. Additionally, time‐ambiguity ranges including today were chosen more frequently than ranges excluding today, akin to the present bias in intertemporal choice. Lastly, evidence suggested that more time ambiguity was preferred for smaller LL amounts yet disliked for larger LL amounts. Study 3 demonstrated that time‐risk and time‐ambiguity preferences are differentiable by giving participants choices involving hypothetical time‐exact, time‐ambiguous, and time‐risky options. Taken together, our results extend the nascent literature on time ambiguity by showing that (i) time‐ambiguity preferences are distinguishable from both time‐risk and delay preferences and (ii) time ambiguity is not generally aversive, but its impact depends on delay and amount magnitude.