Many of the decisions and actions in everyday life result from implicit learning processes. Important to psychopathology are, for example, implicit reward-seeking and punishment-avoidant learning processes. It is known that when specific actions get associated with a rewarding experience, such as positive emotions, that this will increase the likelihood that an organism will engage in similar actions in the future. Similarly, when actions get associated with punishing experiences, such as negative emotions, this may reduce the likelihood that the organism will engage in similar actions in the future. This study examines whether we can observe these implicit processes prospectively in the flow of daily life. If such processes take place then we expect that current behaviour can be predicted by how similar behaviour was experienced (in terms of positive and negative affect) at previous measurement moments. This was examined in a sample of 621 female individuals that had participated in an Experience Sampling data collection. Measures of affect and behaviour were collected at 10 semi-random moments of the day for 5 consecutive days. It was examined whether affective experience that was paired with certain behaviours (physical activity and social context) at previous measurements modified the likelihood to show similar behaviours at next measurement moments. Analyses were performed both at the level of observations (a time scale with units of ± 90 min) and at day level (a time scale with units of 24 h). As expected, we found that affect indeed moderated the extent to which previous behaviour predicted similar behaviour later in time, at both beep- and day-level. This study showed that it is feasible to track reward-seeking and punishment-avoidant behaviour prospectively in humans in the flow of daily life. This opens up a new toolbox to examine processes determining goal-oriented behaviour in relation to psychopathology in humans.

Funding: This research was supported by the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders and Twins, a Belgian nonprofit association for scientific research in multiple births (grant to the East Flanders Prospective Survey). The authors thank all twins for their cooperation. This research was additionally supported by an Aspasia grant (Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research; NWO) awarded to M. Wichers and by the Weijerhorst Foundation. Furthermore, M. Wichers was supported by the Brain Foundation of The Netherlands (fellowship grant nr 2012(1)-03).

Introduction

Many of the decisions and actions in everyday life result from learning processes that are guided by interaction with environmental cues. The capacity to form and continuously update internal representations of stimulus-response associations allows one to select the most advantageous response from a repertoire, and to accurately predict its outcome [1–3]. These implicit associative learning processes are therefore critical mediators of daily life decisions and future course of actions. Consider the example of Peter and Christine who both join the athletics club, in Peter’s case with the goal of becoming a long-distance runner and in Christine’s to make new friends. Peter is tall, slim and fit which predisposes him to excel in endurance activities. He enjoys the training sessions, does not experience a lot of unpleasant physical sensations and improves quickly, soon becoming one of the best runners in the group. As a result, Peter’s repeated exposures to positive outcomes motivate him to keep training. Christine, on the other hand, who is a little shy, sensitive and less interested in running, welcomes the opportunity to join her new teammates in a party. She enjoys the party until one of the girls makes a critical remark about her clothes. She feels very awkward goes home early and skips some practices. When she is invited again to a similar party by her teammates, she declines, until eventually quitting the team. Although seemingly very different, both Peter’s and Christine’s behaviour was governed by two essential mechanisms of operant conditioning [3–6]. Positive reinforcement learning is the process through which new stimuli acquire motivational salience by virtue of being associated with positive emotions, thus becoming rewards. Rewards have, by definition, the potential to increase the likelihood that an organism will engage in actions previously associated with positive affective state [6], as demonstrated by Peter’s case. In this example Peter experiences reward which gets associated with his behaviour of being physically active. This may positively influence Peter’s motivation to repeat this behaviour in the future. Punishment learning, on the other hand, is necessary to avoid aversive outcomes [5,7]. Aversive stimuli decrease the frequency of behaviour linked to negative affective states [6], such as those in Christine’s situation. Christine experiences negative affect which gets paired with being in the above described social context. This may influences her social behaviour, i.e. her choice to avoid those situations in the future. In both examples, the learned associations between (un)pleasant affective experiences and the individual’s behaviour play an important role in motivating future choices to maintain or extinguish the pertinent behaviour. Associative learning processes, therefore, allow for a flexible adaptation of behaviour by guiding organisms in decisions of approach and avoidance of daily life situations, and ultimately prompt and maintain goal-oriented behaviour [6]. The fact that the neural circuits governing associative learning are present even in organisms with the most primitive neural networks [8] demonstrates the importance of this mechanism in survival and evolution.

Experimental studies have shown evidence for positive and negative experiences modifying behaviour in humans [5,9–13]. For example, positive self-talk and self-esteem can be increased by pairing images of a person’s own body with positive stimuli that signal social acceptance [11]. In addition, the unconscious tendency to consume alcohol has been found to decrease following pairing of the alcohol cue with an aversive outcome [9]. Importantly, inadequate reward and punishment learning may play a key role in many forms of deviant behaviour [3,5,14]. For example, whereas impaired punishment learning has been associated with increased risk-taking behaviour and gambling [15], enhanced punishment-avoidance is thought to be related to the acquisition of pain-related fear [12] and in the withdrawal from social situations. Similarly, abnormally high tendency for reward-seeking behaviour is linked with the risk for developing an addiction [9] and eating disorders [16], while suboptimal reward-driven behaviour is believed to be associated with anhedonia, avolition and depression [17,18].

Despite the importance of reward and punishment learning in human behaviour and their putative relevance to mental health, to date, incentive-driven responding has not been studied prospectively in the flow of daily life. This endeavour would provide an ecologically valid assessment of the extent to which affective experience motivates action, with the potential of uncovering real-life behavioural patterns linked to compromised mental health. Physical and social behaviour, as illustrated by the above described two examples, are important types of behaviour that are, in part, controlled by associative learning processes. Furthermore these behaviours have relevance to psychopathology and can be measured using momentary assessment techniques. In the current manuscript we will therefore focus on these two types of behaviour.

Momentary assessment techniques [19–27], enabling the researcher to capture the film rather than a snapshot of daily life reality [28–31], are ideally suited to examine the subtle temporal associations between affect and daily life behaviour over the course of the day(s). Therefore, we can use this method to detect patterns of reward-seeking and punishment-avoidant behaviour by examining whether rewarding or punishing affective states occurring in a certain daily life context, modify the likelihood of engaging in similar daily life contexts in the near future. If we can show that such rewarding or punishing affective experiences influence the likelihood that certain behaviour is repeated more or less often, respectively, then this would support the idea that we can detect the associative learning processes that motivate future behaviour.

The aim of this study is to examine whether it is possible to prospectively track the propagation of reward and punishment-driven behaviour in humans using momentary assessment methodology. For this purpose it was examined, using multilevel analyses, whether affective experience that occurred in the context of specific behaviours at previous measurements (i.e. at t-2 and t-1) modified the likelihood to show similar behaviour at next measurement moments (at time t). In order to obtain initial proof-of-principle, this study focuses on two frequently occurring daily life behaviours which are relevant to mental health states: social context and physical activity. To this end, data pertaining to a general population sample of 621 individuals who participated in an Experience Sampling Method (ESM) study were analysed.