Social Reward Research Articles

Examining social reinforcement learning in social anxiety

Background and objectivesReinforcement learning biases have been empirically linked to anhedonia in depression and theoretically linked to social anhedonia in social anxiety disorder, but little work has directly assessed how socially anxious individuals learn from social reward and punishment. MethodsN = 157 individuals high and low in social anxiety symptoms completed a social probabilistic selection task that involved selecting between pairs of neutral faces with varying probabilities of changing to a happy or angry face. Computational modeling was performed to estimate learning rates. Accuracy in choosing the more rewarding face was also analyzed. ResultsNo significant group differences were found for learning rates. Contrary to hypotheses, participants high in social anxiety showed impaired punishment learning accuracy; they were more accurate at choosing the most rewarding face than they were at avoiding the most punishing face, and their punishment learning accuracy was lower than that of participants low in social anxiety. Secondary analyses found that high (vs. low) social anxiety participants were less accurate at selecting the more rewarding face on more (vs. less) punishing face pairs. LimitationsStimuli were static, White, facial images, which lack important social cues (e.g., movement, sound) and diversity, and participants were largely non-Hispanic, White undergraduates, whose social reinforcement learning may differ from individuals at different developmental stages and those holding more marginalized identities. ConclusionsSocially anxious individuals may be less accurate at learning to avoid social punishment, which may maintain negative beliefs through an interpersonal stress generation process.

Analysis of the evolutionary game between maritime regulators and carriers under the discharge of ballast nuclear wastewater from ships

The Japanese government officially announced the discharge of Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the sea on April 13, 2021, which has caused concern and strong opposition from countries worldwide and international environmental organizations. Through the analysis of relevant data, it is found that the hazards of ship ballast nuclear wastewater are reflected in the following: ship ballast water flows widely, the high discharge of ship ballast water, and the high reserves of Fukushima nuclear wastewater. In this case, the evolutionary game models of the maritime regulator and the carrier, and the society, maritime regulator and the carrier were constructed, respectively. In the evolutionary game model between the maritime regulator and the carrier, the carrier is not very motivated to deal with the ship's ballast water due to the influence of several related factors, especially the exorbitant treatment cost. After introducing the social supervision and reward system, maritime regulators found that controlling their own supervision cost and giving appropriate rewards to freighters with the participation of social supervision can effectively improve the motivation of freighters to deal with the ship's ballast water. In addition, through the comparative analysis of the before-and-after game model, it is found that the high cost required by the carriers to deal with ships' ballast water will directly affect the stable state that the game model tends to be. Therefore, the sustainable growth of the port's ecological environment benefits from pursuing affordable and effective ship's ballast water treatment.

Diminished prospective mental representations of reward mediate reward learning strategies among youth with internalizing symptoms.

Adolescent internalizing symptoms and trauma exposure have been linked with altered reward learning processes and decreased ventral striatal responses to rewarding cues. Recent computational work on decision-making highlights an important role for prospective representations of the imagined outcomes of different choices. This study tested whether internalizing symptoms and trauma exposure among youth impact the generation of prospective reward representations during decision-making and potentially mediate altered behavioral strategies during reward learning. Sixty-one adolescent females with varying exposure to interpersonal violence exposure (n = 31 with histories of physical or sexual assault) and severity of internalizing symptoms completed a social reward learning task during fMRI. Multivariate pattern analyses (MVPA) were used to decode neural reward representations at the time of choice. MVPA demonstrated that rewarding outcomes could accurately be decoded within several large-scale distributed networks (e.g. frontoparietal and striatum networks), that these reward representations were reactivated prospectively at the time of choice in proportion to the expected probability of receiving reward, and that youth with behavioral strategies that favored exploiting high reward options demonstrated greater prospective generation of reward representations. Youth internalizing symptoms, but not trauma exposure characteristics, were negatively associated with both the behavioral strategy of exploiting high reward options as well as the prospective generation of reward representations in the striatum. These data suggest diminished prospective mental simulation of reward as a mechanism of altered reward learning strategies among youth with internalizing symptoms.

Development and validation of the Social Reward Questionnaire-Early Childhood.

Social interactions like group inclusion, receiving praise, or treating others kindly can be motivating and enjoyable. Social reward sensitivity, including motivation and enjoyment, varies between individuals. In early childhood, this variation may relate to differences in social experience and development. Social reward questionnaires have been developed to measure individual differences in social enjoyment for adolescents and adults, but no early childhood measure currently exists. Here, we describe the development and validation of the parent/caregiver report Social Reward Questionnaire-Early Childhood (SRQ-EC) for children aged 3-7 years. The SRQ-EC was developed to quantify both wanting (motivation) and liking (enjoyment) of social rewards, which were considered in separate factor models. For wanting and liking models, exploratory (N = 126) and confirmatory (N = 344) factor analyses identified that three subscales best represented early childhood social reward sensitivity, which were: Sociability (large groups), Admiration (praise and positive attention), and Prosocial Interactions and Compliance (kindness and rule following). SRQ-EC subscales were internally consistent (ω = 0.76-0.91, α = 0.75-0.88, mean interitem correlations = 0.38-0.60) with high test-retest reliability over 2-weeks (r = 0.66-0.85, all p < .001). Subscales differentially associated with other social behavior and personality measures, suggesting construct validity. SRQ-EC subscale scores further showed differential and significant associations with autistic-like traits in nonautistic children. These results suggest that SRQ-EC subscale scores are reliable for assessing social reward sensitivity during early childhood, which could offer key developmental insight regarding interindividual variation in early social behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Functioning Deficits in Schizophrenia and Relevant Interventions

The social function of clients has been linked to the acquisition effect and prognosis during recuperation. Studies have shown that the impact of antipsychotics on cognitive impairment is limited to improving social ability. A previous study shows that cognitive rehabilitation (CR) aimed at improving social ability can increase recollection and concentration. Although recent evidence shows that schizophrenia patients have obstacles in using emotion regulation strategies in society, few studies have explored the relationship between these regulation strategies and emotion and social behavior in daily life. The social symptoms of schizophrenia are usually considered as a reflection of low social cognitive ability. Here, the research on the response to social reward is a feature of human engagement, which is not prominent in the published studies. Daily functions need to motivate individuals to negotiate the social environment and establish friendships by using their social psychological talents. There's evidence that some schizophrenias don't have the social skills that they need in daily life, such as social norms, and show social unhappiness and/or vexatious behaviors. It is suggested that community rehabilitation can address the social and clinical needs of schizophrenia patients in a resource deficient environment. Reinforcement production process is a technique that helps people stay motivated in social situations. The experience and expectation in the interaction determine the happiness in the interaction. Social rewards usually come from social cues, such as facial expressions. This review can provide some guidance to the prevention programs for at-risk children in schools and communities.

Formalising social representation to explain psychiatric symptoms.

Recent work in social cognition has moved beyond a focus on how people process social rewards to examine how healthy people represent other agents and how this is altered in psychiatric disorders. However, formal modelling of social representation has not kept pace with these changes, impeding our understanding of how core aspects of social cognition function, and fail, in psychopathology. Here, we suggest that belief-based computational models provide a basis for an integrated sociocognitive approach to psychiatry, with the potential to address important but unexamined pathologies of social representation, such as maladaptive schemas and illusory social agents.

Glutamine in the cerebellum by magnetic resonance for the diagnosis of Autism

Background: Brain metabolites are involved in processes of excitation and cellular transmission and can provide the sites and indices of synaptic activity and plasticity in addition to supporting inferences about the ongoing pathophysiology. Among them, changes in glutamate levels are involved in the regulation of neurotransmitter activity and are responsible for several behavioral and electrophysiological phenotypes in autism including deficits in cognitive and motor behavior and social reward. Objective: To study the changes in biochemical metabolites in the cerebellum by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) for diagnosis of autism. Methods: One hundred patients with ASD, we randomly selected and submitted to imaging exams in their CNS by magnetic resonance with nuclear proton spectroscopy. All selected patients were examined by the same doctor and their imaging exams were performed by the same neuro-radiology professional. Conclusions: Magnetic resonance imaging with cerebellar spectroscopy is a new tool for the diagnosis and management of autism and can serve all physicians, even if they are not specialists, as a guide for this difficult to manage condition. It can serve both as a means of diagnosis and as a clinical follow-up for the treatment of ASD.

Perceived Organizational Support and Talent Retention of Women Engineers in the Malaysian Oil and Gas Sector: A Conceptual Framework

The influx of women into the workforce has been one of the dominant global social trends for the past fifty years (1970 onwards). Women contribute to half of the total population of Malaysia and play a pertinent role in the nation’s socio-economic development. The Malaysian oil and gas sector employs a significant number of academically qualified, talented, and capable women engineers to fill critical positions for organizational success and sustainability. However, gender-related and management studies have found that organizational support and talent retention of women at the workplace have posed challenges, including the oil and gas sector. This research aims to develop a preliminary conceptual framework to examine the perceived organizational support that contributes to the talent retention of women engineers in the Malaysian oil and gas sector. Two underpinning theories have been applied, i.e, the Perceived Organizational Support Theory (POST) and the Social Exchange Theory (SET). Internal perceived organizational support variables that influence employee retention and their challenges have been reviewed and examined through secondary data, online resources, and government documents. Social support, career growth, rewards, workload, and work flexibility may affect talent retention. Five hypotheses to investigate the factors leading to the retention of talented women engineers in organizations have been developed and discussed in this article. This study may bring positive impacts on talent retention and contribute to the limited gender studies in the engineering discipline within an Eastern setting in the oil and gas sector.

Social Reward Behaviour in Two Groups of European Grey Wolves (Canis lupus lupus)—A Case Study

Prosociality occurs in many species and is likely to be a crucial factor for the survival of group-living animals. Social feedback is an important mechanism for the coordination of group decisions. Since group-living animals with specific personality axes, i.e., boldness, are known to provide certain benefits for their group, bold actions might receive more prosocial feedback than other actions. Our case study aims to determine whether bold behaviour, i.e., novel object interaction (Nobj), might be answered more frequently with prosocial behaviours. We investigated the differences in the frequency of occurrence in prosocial behaviours after three different individual actions in two groups of grey wolves. We aim to outline the development of a social reward behavioural category as part of social feedback mechanisms. We used Markov chain models for probability analyses, and a non-parametric ANOVA to test for differences between the influences of individual behaviours on the probability of a prosocial behaviour chain. We additionally tested for the potential influences of age, sex and personality on the frequency of Nobj. Our results suggest that bold interactions are more often responded to with prosocial behaviour. Bold behaviour might be more often socially rewarded because of its benefits for group-living animals. More research is needed to investigate whether bold behaviour is more frequently responded to prosocially, and to investigate the social reward phenomenon.

Environmental Status Goods and Market-Based Conservation: An Arm of Ostrom’s Polycentric Approach?

Ostrom suggests that collective action problems may present an obstacle to the reduction in (external costs from) global greenhouse gas emissions and that a polycentric approach is necessary to find a solution. A market-based prong of such a polycentric solution—alongside, e.g., governance-based prongs such as transferable pollution permits—may lie in the nature of certain salient “environmentally friendly” goods (e.g., Toyota Prius, Tesla cars, home solar panels). The present study analyzes the social welfare consequences of positional conservation (i.e., consumption of salient environmentally friendly goods for the purpose of status signaling) within a choice theoretic model. For example, the Toyota Prius and Tesla have been shown to be such a type of good. In a two-good model of strategic consumer choice, in which consumers choose between a positional, “conservation good” and an externally costly, “non-conservation good”, we find that positional conservation improves social welfare if the unit external cost of the non-conservation good consumption is sufficiently large. In such a case, positionality serves to (partly or fully) correct an under-consumption of the positional good. Fershtman and Weiss find, within a one-good (action) model, that positionality can be corrective of distortions from positive externalities but not of distortions from negative externalities (e.g., pollution). Within a two-good model of consumer choice, we find that “social rewards” can help to correct distortions generated by negative externalities and improve social welfare. The results of the present study suggest that the Paretian objective may not be to curb positional spending but to shift positional spending toward conspicuous goods that are otherwise under-consumed (e.g., conservation goods or education).

Your smile won’t affect me: Association between childhood maternal antipathy and adult neural reward function in a transdiagnostic sample

Aberrant activation in the ventral striatum (VS) during reward anticipation may be a key mechanism linking adverse childhood experiences (ACE) to transdiagnostic psychopathology. This study aimed to elucidate whether retrospectively reported ACE, specifically maternal antipathy, relate to monetary and social reward anticipation in a transdiagnostic adult sample. A cross-sectional neuroimaging study was conducted in 118 participants with varying levels of ACE, including 25 participants with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 32 with major depressive disorder (MDD), 29 with somatic symptom disorder (SSD), and 32 healthy volunteers (HVs). Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a monetary and social incentive delay task, and completed a self-report measure of ACE, including maternal antipathy. Neural correlates of monetary and social reward anticipation and their association with ACE, particularly maternal antipathy, were analyzed. Participants showed elevated activation in brain regions underlying reward processing, including the VS, only while anticipating social, but not monetary rewards. Participants reporting higher levels of maternal antipathy exhibited reduced activation in the brain reward network, including the VS, only during social, but not monetary reward anticipation. Group affiliation moderated the association between maternal antipathy and VS activation to social reward anticipation, with significant associations found in participants with PTSD and HVs, but not in those with MDD and SSD. Results were not associated with general psychopathology or psychotropic medication use. Childhood maternal antipathy may confer risk for aberrant social reward anticipation in adulthood, and may thus be considered in interventions targeting reward expectations from social interactions.

Complementary lateral hypothalamic populations resist hunger pressure to balance nutritional and social needs

Animals continuously weigh hunger and thirst against competing needs, such as social contact and mating, according to state and opportunity. Yet neuronal mechanisms of sensing and ranking nutritional needs remain poorly understood. Here, combining calcium imaging in freely behaving mice, optogenetics, and chemogenetics, we show that two neuronal populations of the lateral hypothalamus (LH) guide increasingly hungry animals through behavioral choices between nutritional and social rewards. While increased food consumption was marked by increasing inhibition of a leptin receptor-expressing (LepRLH) subpopulation at a fast timescale, LepRLH neurons limited feeding or drinking and promoted social interaction despite hunger or thirst. Conversely, neurotensin-expressing LH neurons preferentially encoded water despite hunger pressure and promoted water seeking, while relegating social needs. Thus, hunger and thirst gate both LH populations in a complementary manner to enable the flexible fulfillment of multiple essential needs.

The Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in Drug-Induced Reward-Implications for Social and Non-Social Factors.

Drug abuse is a worldwide problem that leads to negative physical, mental, and economic consequences. Although pharmacological strategies for drug addiction management have been widely studied, therapeutic options with high efficacy and a low side-effects profile are still limited. Recently, there has been a growing interest in oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) systems as potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of drug abuse. OT and AVP are hypothalamic neuropeptides involved in numerous physiological processes. Additionally, studies show that these neurohormones are highly implicated in the modulation of a wide range of behaviors. Interestingly, ample evidence has shown that both, OT and AVP are able to decrease the consumption of different drugs of abuse, as well as to ameliorate their rewarding and reinforcing effects. Furthermore, OT and AVP have been strongly involved in prosocial effects and social reward. In particular, OT has been shown to be able to shift drug-induced reward into social-induced reward, mainly due to its interaction with the dopaminergic system. This phenomenon is also reflected in the results of clinical trials where intranasal OT shows promising efficacy in managing substance use disorder. Therefore, the aim of this review is to comprehensively characterize the involvement of OT and AVP in the rewarding and other behavioral effects of drugs of abuse in animal models, with a particular highlight on the impact of social factors on the observed effects. Understanding this relationship may contribute to higher drug development success rates, as a result of a more profound and deliberate studies design.

Novel 31-kHz calls emitted by female Lewis rats during social isolation and social inequality conditions

Whether commonly used experimental animals show aversion toward inequality of social rewards, as humans do remains unknown. We examined whether rats emitted the 22-kHz distress calls under social reward inequality. Rats showed affiliative behavior for a specific human who repeatedly stroked and tickled them. When experimenter stroked another rat in front of them and during social isolation, these rats emitted novel calls with acoustic characteristics different from those of calls emitted under physical stress, namely air-puff. Under inequality conditions, rats emitted calls with higher frequency (∼31kHz) and shorter duration (<0.5s) than those emitted when receiving air-puff. However, with an affiliative human in front of them, the number of novel calls was lower and rats emitted 50-kHz calls, indicative of the appetitive state. These results indicate that rats distinguish between conditions of social reward inequality and the presence of an experimenter, and emit novel 31-kHz calls.

An Examination of CSR's role in Fostering Organizational Commitment and Employee Performance

The study aims to identify the inspiration of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in developing organizational commitment and employee performance. Data were collected from 281 employees of Pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan by a standardized survey questionnaire employing the random sample method. Corporate social responsibility, digitalization, organizational rewards, employee performance, and organizational commitment were the main variables of the investigation. The planned framework is examined empirically using a statistical package for the social science for demographics, reliability, descriptive, and correlation. Then confirmatory factor analysis was used to check model fit and validity, and the structural equation model was used for hypothesized model. Corporate social responsibility, digitalization, and organizational rewards positively impact employee performance by the mediating effect of organizational commitment. This examination contributes to a more profound comprehension of how employee performance can be influenced by the impact of corporate social responsibility via organizational commitment.

Reward enhances resilience to chronic social defeat stress in mice: Neural ECs and mGluR5 mechanism via neuroprotection in VTA and DRN.

Stress often leads to emotional disorders such as depression. The reward might render this effect through the enhancement of stress resilience. However, the effect of reward on stress resilience under different intensities of stress needs more evidence, and its potential neural mechanism has been poorly revealed. It has been reported that the endogenous cannabinoid system (ECs) and downstream metabolic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) are closely related to stress and reward, which might be the potential cerebral mechanism between reward and stress resilience, but there is a lack of direct evidence. This study aims to observe the effect of reward on stress resilience under different intensities of stress and further explore potential cerebral mechanisms underlying this effect. Using the chronic social defeat stress model, we applied reward (accompanied by a female mouse) under different intensities of stress in mice during the modeling process. The impact of reward on stress resilience and the potential cerebral mechanism were observed after modeling through behavioral tests and biomolecules. The results showed that stronger stress led to higher degrees of depression-like behavior. Reward reduced depression-like behavior and enhanced stress resilience (all p-value <0.05) (more social interaction in the social test, less immobility time in the forced swimming test, etc.), with a stronger effect under the large stress. Furthermore, the mRNA expression levels of CB1 and mGluR5, the protein expression level of mGluR5, and the expression level of 2-AG (2-arachidonoylglycerol) in both ventral tegmental area (VTA) and dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) were significantly upregulated by reward after modeling (all p-value <0.05). However, the protein expression of CB1 in VTA and DRN and the expression of AEA (anandamide) in VTA did not differ significantly between groups. Intraperitoneal injection of a CB1 agonist (URB-597) during social defeat stress significantly reduced depression-like behavior compared with a CB1 inhibitor (AM251) (all p-value <0.05). Interestingly, in DRN, the expression of AEA in the stress group was lower than that of the control group, with or without reward (all p-value <0.05). These findings demonstrate that combined social and sexual reward has a positive effect on stress resilience during chronic social defeat stress, potentially by influencing the ECs and mGluR5 in VTA and DRN.

Who exploits? The trusted one, the dark one, or both?

Trust represents one of the most complex phenomena in social settings, in that, while it is necessary for social interactions, it also renders one vulnerable to exploitation. Further, its examination stands at the crossroads of the person-situation debate due to its conceptualisation as a dispositional trait as well as a situational artefact. This study examined the role of dark traits and trust in promoting exploitative choices at the individual and situational levels. In a sample of working managers (Study 1), we hypothesised and investigated the moderating role of trust in the relationship between dark core and exploitation at the trait level. In a sample of prospective managers (Study 2), we examined the situational influence of social distance and reward on the propensity to behave exploitatively using a trust game. The findings revealed a positive moderating role of trust in both studies. Additionally, it was observed that dark core and trust significantly interacted with the inherent reward for defection and social distance to predict exploitation, self-interest, or benevolence across the situations. As managerial trust is essential, our study is relevant considering that dark individuals are increasingly rising in the organizational hierarchy.

The effects of social context and opportunity cost on the behavioral economic value of cannabis.

Behavioral economics suggest that cannabis reinforcing value (cannabis demand) may be influenced by external, contextual factors such as the social reward that might accompany cannabis use and the presence of opportunity costs (e.g., a next-day responsibility that cannabis use might adversely impact). The present study examined the effect of social context and opportunity cost on cannabis demand and explored whether relations were moderated by cannabis use severity. Adults with past-week cannabis use recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 310; 53.5% female, 79.4% White) completed four purchase tasks, in which participants reported how much cannabis they would purchase across escalating prices, to index cannabis demand under varying contexts: (a) solitary, typical responsibilities; (b) social, typical responsibilities; (c) solitary, substantial responsibilities; and (d) social, substantial responsibilities. The presence of peers significantly increased demand intensity (consumption at zero price) and Omax (maximum expenditure) relative to the solitary conditions. Substantial responsibilities significantly decreased intensity, breakpoint (price at which consumption is fully suppressed), and Pmax (price at which maximum expenditure occurs) and increased elasticity (greater price sensitivity). Demand was most inelastic in the social, typical responsibilities condition relative to other conditions. Cannabis use severity was associated with less elastic demand in the solitary, typical responsibilities condition. Those with higher cannabis use severity reported larger differences in demand intensity and Omax between solitary and social conditions, and in demand elasticity between typical and substantial responsibility conditions. Results are consistent with previous research illustrating social and opportunity costs as determinants of cannabis use behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Green Infrastructure- A Roadmap Towards Sustainable Development

India is the fifth more vulnerable country to climate change consequences, with 2.54.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at risk every year. In conclusion, India has committed to reducing the greenhouse emissions of its Gross Domestic Product by 33-35 per cent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. However, India will need to raise $2.5 trillion between 2016 and 2030 to accomplish this goal (MOEFCC, 2015). However, climate-related investments — both public and private — in green infrastructure development remain restricted. While India has taken several measures to solve this issue, rising green investments would need a greater emphasis on India’s infrastructure development. Long-term infrastructure is essential for a better future in an era when India announced that it would begin its decarburization journey to reach specified green targets. Green infrastructure is innovation and practices that employ natural systems to get better the overall value of the environment and provide ecological, social, and economic rewards. The study describes the contribution and investment in green infrastructure to optimize the growth with sustainable development in India. The research reveals that effective planning for green investment helps to maintain the adequate trade-off between development and ecosystem.

Differences in emotional contagion, interpersonal relationships and social rewards in males and females: examining the links with primary and secondary psychopathic traits

AbstractIndividuals with psychopathic traits display low empathy and as a result they have difficulties maintaining meaningful relationships. Emotional contagion, the ability to automatically mimic others’ emotional states (facial expressions, movements), is a precursor of empathy that contributes to relationship quality and is impaired in individuals with psychopathic traits. The current study examines sex differences in primary and secondary psychopathic traits in a sample of 389 participants (Mage = 33.61; 241 females) and the association of these personality traits with romantic and peer relationships, susceptibility to negative (sadness, fear, anger) and positive (happiness, love) emotional contagion and social motivation factors. Hierarchical multiple regressions run separately in male and female participants, revealed different factors contribute to the maintenance of primary and secondary psychopathic traits. Findings infer different difficulties in social functioning (forming and maintaining relationships), regulating emotions, empathizing via emotional contagion, and motivating factors to engage socially, relate to primary and secondary traits, as well as differences in men and women. This research reflects the importance of investigating psychopathic traits heterogeneously in males and females, to better inform prevention efforts focused on hindering the development and maintenance of these personality traits.