Does personality affect how we learn to stop expecting rewards?
People with higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism are less successful at learning when a stimulus signals that an expected reward will be withheld.
Source
Do personality traits predict individual differences in excitatory and inhibitory learning?
Inspect source passages
Does personality affect how we learn to stop expecting rewards?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
194 healthy participants
A total of 194 healthy participants took part in the computer-based learning task, all of whom completed the EPQ-RS and BIS/BAS questionnaires.
20 items in the Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System scale
This consists of a list of 20 items for which participants use a four-point response scale to express whether the statement is true or false for them (Carver and White, ).
What they did
Researchers tested 194 healthy adult participants using a computer-based associative learning task where Lego blocks served as conditioned stimuli and pleasant images served as rewards. Participants also completed the 48-item Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised Short Scale and the 20-item Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Systems scales. The task evaluated how well participants learned simple associations and how effectively they learned conditioned inhibition, where a specific stimulus signaled that an expected reward would not appear.
What they found
The study confirmed that participants successfully learned conditioned inhibition, but individual differences in personality traits played a significant role. Higher neuroticism scores significantly correlated with weaker inhibitory learning, as did higher anxiety and fear scores. Interestingly, 18 participants failed the basic associative learning task and had to be excluded from the main analysis, and males generally performed better than females on excitatory and inhibitory learning.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Initially, the study relies entirely on a correlational design, which prevents drawing causal conclusions about whether personality traits directly cause differences in learning. Furthermore, the observed effect sizes between personality traits and learning performance were relatively small, meaning other unmeasured factors likely influence these learning differences. Additionally, the sample was relatively young, with a mean age of 24.85, and used only positive images as rewards, which limits how well these findings generalize to older populations or negative emotional situations.
Key terms
- conditioned inhibition
- An associative learning process where a stimulus learns to signal that an expected reward or outcome will not occur.
- excitatory learning
- The process of learning that a specific stimulus predicts the presence of a reward or outcome.
- summation test
- A method to prove a stimulus is inhibitory by checking if presenting it alongside a different rewarding stimulus reduces the expectation of that reward.
- neuroticism
- A personality trait characterized by a tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, or depression.
- behavioral inhibition system
- A neurological and temperamental system that responds to signals of punishment, non-reward, and novelty by inhibiting behavior.
- behavioral activation system
- A system sensitive to signals of reward, which drives individuals to seek out goals and engage in behavior.
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Quiz yourself
How do established inhibitory control tasks like Go/No-Go differ from conditioned inhibition tasks?
Common questions
Why did the researchers use Lego blocks as stimuli?
Lego blocks were chosen because they are neutral, distinct stimuli that do not carry pre-existing emotional meaning, ensuring that participants' learning was shaped entirely during the experiment.
How did the researchers prove that a stimulus was truly inhibitory?
They used a summation test. They combined the suspected inhibitory stimulus with a known reward-signaling stimulus; if the participant's expectation of a reward dropped, it proved the stimulus was successfully acting as an inhibitor.
Why did higher neuroticism and anxiety correlate with poorer learning?
Overactive emotional or behavioral inhibition systems can impair their normal functioning, causing individuals high in these traits to process the absence of expected rewards less effectively.
What kinds of rewards were used in this study?
The study used positive, pleasant images from the International Affective Picture System as rewards, excluding erotic images.
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