Spontaneous instrumental avoidance learning in social contexts.

ABSTRACT: Adaptation to our social environment requires learning how to avoid potentially harmful situations, such as encounters with aggressive individuals. Threatening facial expressions can evoke automatic stimulus-driven reactions, but whether their aversive motivational value suffices to drive instrumental active avoidance remains unclear. When asked to freely choose between different action alternatives, participants spontaneously-without instruction or monetary reward-developed a preference for choices that maximized the probability of avoiding angry individuals (sitting away from them in a waiting room). Most participants showed clear behavioral signs of instrumental learning, even in the absence of an explicit avoidance strategy. Inter-individual variability in learning depended on particip

SUBMITTER: Mennella R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9585085 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature