Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer Effect in Social Contexts

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) effect suggests that external cues can signal potential reward/punishment values, subsequently affecting decision-making and behavior. For human social behavior, learned external cues can affect whom we choose to approach and befriend in social situations and whom we avoid, or determine when we speak up in class and when we choose to stay silent.

However, to our knowledge, no prior research had employed social tasks that examine social PIT effects.

Overview:

 

Project type

Master’s thesis project

My role

First author, principal investigator

Other teammates

Stephen J. Read, faculty advisor

Danuisca Rangan, research assistant

Timeline

Dec 2019 – Jun 2021

Analyses performed

Multilevel Modeling

Deliverables

Conference presentation (PDF)

Publication (MA Thesis)

 

Research question:

How do previously learned social cues affect human social decision-making?

Research approach:

Experiments were designed via Qualtrics and data collected via Prolific (total N = 500). Participants were first taught the association between visual cues and social outcomes. Then they completed a dating task where they read dating profiles of potential mates with previously trained visual cues as backgrounds, and they indicated whether they want to connect or reject the person.

Survey links (copies):

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer effect in human mate selection behavior
Data collected in 2020, N = 500

Analysis plan:

Multilevel modeling in R using the glmer package to better estimate the probability of a right-swipe during rapid decision-making.

Key findings:

Participants’ mate-seeking motivation played a crucial role in how they utilize learned cues in their mate selection decision-making – those who are low in seeking motivation were more aversive of negative cues while those who are high in seeking motivation were more likely to approach mates associated with negative cues.

Conference presentations:

Match or pass: Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer effect in dating app mate-selection behavior
Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Conference, March 2021

Publications:

Examining Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer Effect in Human Mate Selection Behavior
Master’s thesis, 2021