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Using Pavlovian cues to boost self-control
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Using Pavlovian cues to boost self-control
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Running head: PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 1
Using Pavlovian Cues to Boost Self-Control
Peter Wang
Department of Psychology
University of Southern California
December 2018
Master of Art (PSYCHOLOGY)
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 2
Abstract
Prior research has demonstrated that Pavlovian cues can invigorate instrumental response in a
process known as Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT). Moreover, cues of one reward can
invigorate action to obtain a different reward in a general form of PIT. In two online studies, I
attempt to use this general PIT effect to increase self-control by presenting a Pavlovian cue
associated with an Amazon gift card reward. Study 1 found that the Pavlovian cue only increases
persistence on an impossible anagram task among participants who report greater desire for the
gift card. Study 2 found a main effect of the Pavlovian cue, such that participants spend longer
on anagrams when the Pavlovian cue is present than when a control cue is present. However,
Study 2 did not replicate the interaction between cue and desire for the gift card from Study 1. I
discuss differences between Study 1 and Study 2 that may have resulted in this inconsistency. I
then discuss implications of my studies for our theoretical understanding of PIT, as well as the
potential for building context-based interventions.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 3
Using Pavlovian Cues to Boost Self-Control
The influence of contextual cues on behavior has been demonstrated in a variety of
domains, including addiction (Volkow et al., 2006), achievement (Bargh, Lee-Chai, Barndollar,
Gollwitzer, & Trötschel, 2001), and social norms (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003). Given such
effects of context on behavior, researchers have begun examining the role of contextual cues in
promoting self-control (van Koningsbruggen, Stroebe, Papies, & Aarts, 2011; Papies & Hamstra,
2010). That is, contextual cues may increase the likelihood of pursuing better, long-term
outcomes over worse but immediately gratifying rewards. Supporting the role of context in
increasing self-control, posters priming dietary goals at a butcher shop lead restrained eaters to
take fewer food samples (Papies & Hamstra, 2010).
If cues in context can increase self-control, then it would be valuable to understand how I
might imbue stimuli with such motivational effects. To answer this question, I focus on the effect
of context on behavior through reward processes involving Pavlovian conditioning.
Pavlovian Conditioning
In Pavlovian conditioning, a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) is paired with a
motivationally rewarding or aversive outcome (unconditioned stimulus; UCS), allowing the
recipient of the procedure to learn a contingency between the CS and UCS (Lovibond & Shanks,
2002). Moreover, after successful conditioning with reward, the CS is attributed with incentive
salience, such that presentation of the CS induces wanting for its corresponding outcome
(Berridge & Robinson, 2003). Reflecting this process, dopamine activity in the ventral striatum
of the brain increase upon presentation of the CS (Berridge & Robinson, 2003). To the extent
that wanting leads to action, the incentive salience model of Pavlovian conditioning suggests that
Pavlovian cues may act as contextual triggers of behavior.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 4
Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer
Consistent with the incentive salience model, studies have demonstrated that Pavlovian
cues can drive instrumental behavior in a process called Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT;
Talmi, Seymour, Dayan, & Dolan, 2008). In a standard PIT paradigm, the recipient learns the
contingencies between different CS (e.g., yellow triangle) and rewards (e.g., popcorn). In a
separate task, the recipient learns the instrumental contingencies between different actions (e.g.,
pressing a button) and rewards (popcorn). To test transfer effects from the Pavlovian cue to
instrumental responding, experimenters then present the Pavlovian cues in extinction (i.e.
without presenting reward) and measure the vigor of different instrumental responses when each
cue is present. If the transfer is successful, subsequent presentation of a CS under extinction
conditions will invigorate instrumental action more than a cue that does not predict a reward. For
example, after learning to associate a lever press with sucrose (instrumental conditioning) and a
visual cue with sucrose (Pavlovian conditioning), rats increased lever pressing when the visual
cue was presented (PIT; Wyvell & Berridge, 2000).
Two types of effects result from PIT paradigms. In the first type, termed specific PIT, the
vigor of responding for a particular reward is highest when the Pavlovian cue for that same
reward is simultaneously presented. Thus, a Pavlovian cue for popcorn invigorated the
instrumental response for popcorn more than the instrumental response for chocolate (Watson,
Wiers, Hommel, & de Wit, 2014). To account for specific PIT effects, researchers have posited
that conditioned cues activate a representation of its corresponding reward, which then drives
instrumental behavior to obtain that reward (Nadler, Delgado, & Delamater, 2011).
Prior research has also demonstrated a general form of PIT (Nadler et al., 2011), in which
Pavlovian cues invigorate general instrumental responding even when the reward represented by
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 5
the cue has never been paired with an instrumental action. Thus, a Pavlovian cue that rewarded
nuts invigorated instrumental responses that resulted in popcorn and chocolate (Watson et al.,
2014). Although the specific mechanisms of general PIT remain unclear, such general
motivational effects of Pavlovian cues suggest that contextual cues conditioned by reward may
not only increase wanting for specific outcomes, but also rewards more generally.
PIT and Self-Control
While the effects of Pavlovian conditioning are often examined with regard to tempting,
harmful behaviors such as drug use (Hogarth & Chase, 2012) and unhealthy eating (Watson et
al., 2014), I consider the possibility that Pavlovian cues may invigorate pursuit of self-control
outcomes. In particular, I may be able to direct the generally motivating effects of Pavlovian
cues towards self-control behaviors. Understanding the potential of Pavlovian cues in promoting
self-control may reveal the extent of general PIT effects in influencing sustained goal pursuit, as
well as a new route to enhancing self-control.
Design and Hypothesis
I conducted two within-subjects studies with humans to examine whether a Pavlovian cue
can improve self-control through general PIT effects. In both studies, visual cues were paired
with either an increased chance of winning a $25 Amazon gift card or no outcome. The cue
paired with the gift card was my CS, while the cue paired with no outcome provided my control
condition. Each participant learned both the CS and the control cue. Although the gift card, as a
form of money, is a secondary reinforcer, prior research has demonstrated successful Pavlovian
conditioning (Delgado, Labouliere, & Phelps, 2006; Knutson, Adams, Fong, & Hommer, 2001)
and PIT (Talmi et al., 2008) using money.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 6
To examine PIT effects, I measured persistence on impossible anagram trials when the
CS was present, as well as persistence on trials when the control cue was present. Each
participant was administered both conditions. Impossible anagram tasks are commonly used to
measure self-control (Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015). As an achievement-related
task (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999), solving an anagram may provide a sense of accomplishment,
but requires overcoming the temptation to quit. Because solving an anagram is rewarding,
persisting on an anagram task may be considered an instrumental behavior.
If Pavlovian cues have general motivational effects on behavior, then presenting a CS
associated with gift card may increase persistence on anagram trials. I predicted that participants
would spend more time before quitting on impossible anagrams that were presented with the CS,
than on anagrams that were presented with the control cue.
Study 1
Method
Recruitment. I recruited 102 students from the University of Southern California
psychology participant pool to participate in an online study for participant pool credit. Thirty-
two participants were excluded from analyses: 3 failed to complete the study, 11 reported
looking up the anagram solutions online, 3 reported having heard about the nature of the study
from others, 8 failed the attention check, and 7 took longer than 45 minutes to complete the study
(suggesting that they did not complete the study in one sitting). Analyses were conducted on the
remaining 70 participants (54 females and 16 males), whose ages averaged 20.63 years (SD =
1.82).
Pavlovian conditioning phase. The study occurred in two phases: the Pavlovian
conditioning phase and the PIT phase. In the Pavlovian conditioning phase, participants were
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 7
told that they could receive several chances to win a $25 Amazon gift card. They were told that
the study ran on a raffle system, and each point they received in the task corresponded to a raffle
ticket entered in the contest. Participants then saw a series of 28 trials, half of which were
rewarded trials (i.e. win a point) and half of which were neutral trials (i.e. no outcome). On each
trial, a loading message appeared on the screen (“Please wait…”) for 2 seconds in either Courier
or italicized Verdana font, followed by either a positive (“You won one point for the gift card!”)
or neutral (“You didn’t win anything.”) outcome message in the same font. To insure that
participants were paying attention to the task, I required participants to click the Next button to
move on to the next trial.
This part of the study allowed participants to learn the contingencies between the cues
and the different outcomes. The two font types acted as my CS and control cue, and the pairing
of font type to outcome was counterbalanced between subjects. The 28 conditioning trials were
split into 7 blocks, with each block containing 2 rewarded trials and 2 neutral trials. The order of
trials was randomized within each block.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 8
Figure 1. The Pavlovian conditioning task for Study 1. The loading screens (top half) are shown
for two seconds, and then either a positive (bottom left) or neutral (bottom right) outcome is
shown. One font type acts as the Pavlovian cue (left half), and the other acts as the control cue
(right half).
PIT phase. In the PIT phase, participants were told that we were evaluating their verbal
comprehension abilities through a series of anagram puzzles. Participants were shown examples
of anagrams and told that they had 3 minutes to solve each puzzle before the page automatically
moved on. They were also told that they could skip an anagram at any time by typing “skip” into
the text entry box. Participants then saw a series of 6 anagram trials, with 2 easy and 4
impossible trials. Participants were not told that some of the anagrams were impossible to solve.
Trials always appeared in this order: easy, impossible, impossible, easy, impossible, impossible.
I interspersed the impossible anagrams with easy ones to maintain motivation on the task and
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 9
reduce suspicion in the participants. To present the CS and control cue, each anagram was shown
in either Courier or italicized Verdana font. Persistence was measured as the amount of time
participants spent on each impossible anagram before skipping. Easy anagrams were: ceabh
(“beach”), yncfa (“fancy”). Impossible anagrams were: padus, alavt, dhboc, pecit.
This task provided participants with the opportunity to persist on an instrumental
behavior when a CS or control cue was present. The order of control and CS conditions was
randomized within the first two impossible trials, within the last two impossible trials, and within
the two easy trials. Similarly, the order of two impossible anagrams (“padus” and “alavt”) was
randomized within the first two impossible trials, and the order of two other impossible
anagrams (“dhboc” and “pecit”) was randomized within the last two impossible trials. The order
of the two easy anagrams was randomized as well. Thus, there were 4 possible orders of
condition: positive-neutral-positive-neutral (PNPN), PNNP, NPPN, and NPNP. There were also
4 possible orders of impossible anagrams. The orders of condition and anagrams were coded for
each participant and controlled for in analyses. Participants who did not skip an anagram and
spent the full 3 minutes attempting to solve it were coded as having persisted for 3 minutes.
Figure 2. The PIT phase for Study 1. Impossible anagrams are presented in one of two fonts. The
page also reminds the participant how to skip the trial.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 10
Questionnaires. Participants then reported their desire for the gift card (“How much do
you want the $25 Amazon gift card?”), whether they have any form of dyslexia, whether they
have heard about the nature of the study from others, and whether they looked up any of the
anagrams online. Affirming any of the latter 3 items was criterion for exclusion. Desire for the
gift card was reported on a scale of 1 (“Not at all”) to 5 (“A great deal”). Additionally,
participants completed a demographics questionnaire asking about their age, gender, and race.
Participants were then debriefed on the purpose of the study.
Results
I log-transformed in base 10 all persistence times from the CS-impossible trials and all
persistence times from the control-impossible trials, and averaged the two sets of measures. I
then entered the averaged log-transformed persistence times into a full-factorial repeated
measures ANOVA with two levels of the within-subjects factor (cue: CS and control). To
account for order effects, I controlled for the order of conditions and the order of anagrams as
between-subjects factors. I also controlled for the pairing of font type with condition, to account
for the possibility that one font might be more motivating than the other.
Results revealed no significant main effect of the cue, F(1, 42) = 0.540, p = 0.467. I then
considered the possibility that the CS may only have been motivating for those who wanted the
gift card. For those who did not express a desire for the gift card, the CS may not have had a
strong effect on behavior. I therefore mean-centered reported desire for the gift card and included
it as a covariate in the model. Results revealed no significant main effect of the cue after
including desire for the gift card, F(1, 41) = 0.076, p = 0.785, but a marginally significant
interaction effect of the cue with the desire for the gift card, F(1, 41) = 3.908, p = 0.055, partial
η
2
= 0.087. To investigate the interaction of cue with desire for the gift card, I dichotomized
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 11
reported desire using a median split, coding the half of the participants who selected 1 through 4
on the scale as 1 and the other half who selected 5 as 2. Those who reported more desire for the
gift card showed a steeper difference in persistence times between the CS and control conditions,
suggesting that the effect of the CS was stronger for those who wanted the gift card more.
Discussion
My results suggest that a Pavlovian cue for a gift card reward may increase persistence
on anagram tasks only when the reward is seen as desirable. The interaction effect is consistent
with accounts of PIT; if the effect of a Pavlovian cue on instrumental behavior arises from
wanting for the reward, then wanting for the gift card in my study should be associated with
stronger PIT effects. However, because this interaction effect was only marginally significant, it
may not be a reliable finding. Moreover, there was no main effect of the Pavlovian cue on
persistence.
The failure to find main and interaction effects may have been due to some limitations of
the study design. I manipulated font type in my Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, which may
have introduced unintended disfluency effects. Prior research has shown that difficult-to-read
fonts can induce analytic reasoning (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007). Since outcomes
and anagrams were presented in different and unusual fonts, disfluency effects may have
interfered with Pavlovian learning and PIT effects. To avoid effects of the cue on fluency and
comprehensibility, I used message borders in Study 2 as my cues.
Moreover, I randomized the order of anagrams and order of conditions simultaneously,
resulting in numerous variations of the design. This made interactions difficult to interpret and
may have introduced noise into the data, given the relatively small sample size. In Study 2, I
randomized the order of conditions but kept the order of anagrams constant.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 12
Study 2
Based on the results of Study 1, I hypothesized in Study 2 that the Pavlovian cue would
influence persistence more strongly among those who report greater desire for the gift card. I was
also interested in whether addressing the limitations from Study 1 would reveal a main effect of
the cue.
In this study, I explored other factors that might moderate the effect of cue on
persistence. In addition to asking about their desire for the gift card, I asked participants to report
their perceived probability of winning the gift card, as well as how much they needed the gift
card.
Method
Recruitment. I recruited 112 adults from Amazon Mechanical Turk. To be included in
the study, participants had to be age 18 or older, fluent in English, and living in the United
States. I recruited U.S. participants to maximize the likelihood that participants would be familiar
with anagram puzzles. Fifteen participants were excluded from analyses: 5 reported looking up
the anagram solutions online, 1 reported having some form of dyslexia, and 9 failed an attention
check. Analyses were conducted on the remaining 97 participants (41 females and 56 males),
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 13
whose ages averaged 35.52 years (SD = 9.71).
Figure 3. The Pavlovian conditioning task for Study 2. One border acts as the Pavlovian cue (left
half) and the other as the control cue (right half).
Pavlovian conditioning phase. As in Study 1, the study occurred in two phases: the
Pavlovian conditioning phase and the PIT phase. In the Pavlovian conditioning phase,
participants were told that they could receive several chances to win a $25 Amazon gift card.
They were told that the study ran on a raffle system, and each point they received in the task
corresponded to a raffle ticket entered in the contest. Participants then saw a series of 28 trials,
half of which were rewarded trials (i.e. win a point) and half of which were neutral trials (i.e. no
outcome). On each trial, a loading message appeared on the screen (“Please wait…”) for 2
seconds surrounded by one of two stylized message borders, followed by the outcome message
(“You won one point for the gift card!” or “You didn’t win anything.”) inside the same border.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 14
To insure that participants were paying attention to the task, I required participants to click the
next button to move on to the next trial.
Addressing the fluency concerns of Study 1, I used the message borders instead of font
types as my CS and control cue, and the pairing of border to outcome was counterbalanced
between subjects. The 28 conditioning trials were split into 7 blocks, with each block containing
2 rewarded trials and 2 neutral trials. The order of trials was randomized within each block.
PIT phase. The PIT phase followed the same design as the PIT phase in Study 1.
Participants were told that we were evaluating their verbal comprehension abilities through a
series of anagram puzzles. Participants were shown examples of anagrams and told that they had
3 minutes to solve each puzzle before the page automatically moved on. They were also told that
they could skip an anagram at any time by typing “skip” into the text entry box. Participants then
saw a series of 6 anagram trials, with 2 easy and 4 impossible trials. Participants were not told
that some of the anagrams were impossible to solve. Trials always appeared in this order: easy,
impossible, impossible, easy, impossible, impossible. I interspersed the impossible anagrams
with easy ones to maintain motivation on the task and reduce suspicion in the participants. To
present the CS and control cue, each anagram was shown inside one of the two message borders.
Persistence was measured as the amount of time participants spent on each impossible anagram
before skipping.
Addressing order effect concerns from Study 1, I did not randomize the order of
anagrams. Anagrams always appeared in this order: ceabh, padus, alavt, yncfa, dhboc, pecit. The
order of control and CS conditions was randomized within the first two impossible trials, within
the last two impossible trials, and within the two easy trials. There were 4 possible orders of
condition: positive-neutral-positive-neutral (PNPN), PNNP, NPPN, and NPNP. The order of
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 15
conditions was coded for each participant and controlled for in analyses. Participants who did not
skip an anagram and spent the full 3 minutes attempting to solve it were coded as having
persisted for 3 minutes.
Questionnaires. Participants then reported their desire for the gift card (“How much do
you want the $25 Amazon gift card?”). On the following page, they reported how much they
needed the gift card (“How much do you need the $25 Amazon gift card?”), and their perceived
probability of winning the gift card (“How likely do you think you are to get the $25 Amazon
gift card?”). Desire for the gift card and need for the gift card were reported on a scale of 1 (“Not
at all”) to 5 (“A great deal”), while likelihood of winning the gift card was reported on a slider
scale of 0 to 100, representing percentage points. Participants also reported whether they have
any form of dyslexia, whether they have heard about the nature of the study from others, and
whether they looked up any of the anagrams online. Affirming any of these 3 items was criterion
for exclusion. In addition, participants completed a demographics questionnaire asking about
their age, gender, and race. Participants were then debriefed on the purpose of the study.
Results
I log-transformed in base 10 all persistence times from the CS-impossible trials and all
persistence times from the control-impossible trials, and averaged the two sets of measures. I
found and excluded 4 outliers that were outside 1.5 x the interquartile range of the control
condition persistence times.
I first ran the model without any covariates by entering the averaged log-transformed
persistence times for the remaining 93 participants into a full-factorial repeated measures
ANOVA with two levels of the within-subjects factor (cue: CS and control). I controlled for the
order of conditions and the pairing of border with condition as between-subjects factors. Results
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 16
revealed a significant main effect of the cue, F(1, 85) = 6.754, p = 0.011, partial η
2
= 0.074;
participants spent more time on CS-impossible trials than control-impossible trials (see Figure
3). There was also a significant interaction of the cue with the order of condition, F(3, 85) =
8.088, p < 0.001, partial η
2
= 0.222, suggesting order effects. CS persistence time was greater
when the CS condition came first, indicating that participants spent longer on the first anagram
than subsequent anagrams.
I then examined interactions with covariates. I correlated desire for the gift card, need for
the gift card, and perceived probability of winning the gift card, revealing a strong correlation
between need and desire (r = 0.502, p < 0.001) and a weak-to-moderate correlation between
desire and probability (r = 0.227, p = 0.028). Because they were strongly correlated, I summed
the desire and need scores into one composite score. I then mean-centered the desire/need and
probability scores. After adding desire/need and probability as covariates into the repeated
measures ANOVA, the main effect of cue remained significant, F(1, 83) = 6.706, p = 0.011,
partial η
2
= 0.075. The interaction of cue and order of conditions remained significant as well,
F(3, 83) = 7.784, p < 0.001, partial η
2
= 0.220. However, the interaction of cue with desire/need
was not significant, F(1, 83) = 0.431, p = 0.513, partial η
2
= 0.005, nor was the interaction of cue
with probability, F(1, 83) = 2.412, p = 0.124, partial η
2
= 0.028.
Discussion
Contrary to my expectations and the results of Study 1, I did not find a significant
interaction of cue and desire. Instead, I found a significant main effect of the Pavlovian cue on
persistence.
Changes from Study 1 may account for this difference. In Study 1, I used font types as
cues, which may have created disfluency effects and cancelled the main effect of the cue. For
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 17
example, disfluency may have induced analytic reasoning, making participants less likely to use
irrelevant information (motivation from gift card cues) when completing anagrams. I also kept
the order of anagrams constant in Study 2, which may have reduced noise, allowing us to see the
main effect of the cue.
Moreover, Study 1 used college participants, as opposed to MTurk participants, which
may have affected the interaction of cue and desire/need. Because MTurk participants complete
studies for money, they may have been more strongly motivated by the gift card than college
participants who complete studies for participant pool credit. Consistent with this account,
participants from the MTurk study reported greater and less variable desire to win the gift card
(M = 4.34, SD = 0.961) than participants from the participant pool study (M = 3.93, SD = 1.012).
Additionally, desire in the MTurk study was more heavily skewed to the left, suggesting a
stronger ceiling effect. Thus, there may not have been enough variance on desire in the MTurk
study to find a significant interaction effect.
Finally, because the interaction effect from Study 1 was only marginally significant, it
may not have been a reliable finding. It is possible that an explicit self-report measure of desire
cannot adequately capture motivational effects arising from the Pavlovian cue.
General Discussion
I ran two studies to examine the effects of Pavlovian cues on self-control. The overall
finding was mixed; while results from both studies are consistent with an account of Pavlovian-
instrumental transfer, Study 2 did not replicate the results of Study 1. Although the differences in
results may be attributed to differences in study design and sample characteristics, more work is
needed to understand whether the effect of Pavlovian cue on self-control is replicable.
Limitations and Future Studies
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 18
I am developing future studies to address the limitations of Studies 1 and 2. Because
desire scores from Study 2 were heavily skewed, I will consider manipulating the value of the
reward during Pavlovian learning. By controlling the value of the reward, I may be better able to
find an interaction of cue and desire, and reconcile one of the differences between Study 1 and
Study 2.
Both of my studies use monetary reward, a secondary reinforcer. However, conditioning
with a primary reinforcer, such as food, may be a purer form of Pavlovian learning. Furthermore,
money is a unique kind of reward because it can be exchanged for other rewards, and it seems
unlikely to induce the satiation effects that are seen in other rewards. I will therefore attempt to
replicate Study 2 using snacks in my Pavlovian learning paradigm.
Finally, while I measured desire for the gift card, I did not measure desire to achieve on
the anagram task. These factors may influence PIT effects separately: Desire for the gift card
may increase motivational arousal resulting from the Pavlovian cue, whereas desire to achieve
may increase the tendency to attribute such arousal to the anagram task. For those who value
achievement on the anagram task, winning is a more meaningful outcome. Therefore, those who
value task achievement should be more likely to attribute their arousal to pursuit of the
achievement goal, increasing task persistence. For those who do not value achievement on the
anagram task, the difference between winning and quitting is less meaningful. Therefore, those
who do not value task achievement should be less likely to attribute their arousal to pursuit of the
achievement goal, resulting in lower task persistence. Consistent with this reasoning, prior
research on habit formation found that healthy snack cues impact food choice more strongly
among participants with greater dietary adherence concerns. This suggests that existing goals can
amplify the effect of a contextual cue on the value of a self-control choice (Lin, Wood, &
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 19
Monterosso, 2016). In future studies, I will measure desire to achieve as a factor that may
interact with Pavlovian cuing to influence task persistence.
Implications
The possibility of increasing self-control by presenting Pavlovian cues has broad
theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, this effect suggests Pavlovian cues can have
motivational effects on behavior independent of outcome identity. Studies examining general
PIT have measured the influence of a Pavlovian cue for one reward on an instrumental response
for a different, but related reward. For example, Watson and colleagues (2014) examined the
effect of a Pavlovian cue for nuts on key presses that deliver popcorn. While nuts are different
from popcorn, they are related by category (food) and satisfy similar goals (relieve hunger). My
studies suggest that a Pavlovian cue for a gift card can motivate instrumental behavior for an
entirely different reward (achievement), implying that Pavlovian cues can induce a general
motivational state without regard for reward identity. This is consistent with descriptions of
model-free and model-based learning, in which information about the identity of a reward
(model-based) is processed separately from mere information about the value of a reward
(model-free; Dayan & Berridge, 2014). However, such identity-independent effects may be
unique to Pavlovian cues that predict money, because money is a higher-level reward that can be
exchanged for other kinds of rewards. By replicating my findings using more fundamental
rewards such as food, I can understand whether Pavlovian cues for money have unique
motivational effects.
Further research can investigate the mechanisms by which my Pavlovian cues influence
self-control. One possibility, mentioned above, is that the motivational arousal induced by
Pavlovian cues are attributed to the task at hand. Supporting this possibility, theories on both
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 20
somatic markers (Damasio, 1996) and attribution of arousal (Schachter & Singer, 1962) predict
that responses to stimuli are informed by interoceptive state. Thus, the money-related Pavlovian
cues in my study may have induced a general sense of motivational arousal, which was then
attributed to goal pursuit on the achievement task. This possibility also raises the question of
whether I can redirect motivational arousal arising from Pavlovian cues for tempting outcomes
(e.g., unhealthy snacks) towards self-control choices (e.g., going for a run). To test the role of
arousal in general PIT, future studies can examine whether the physiological arousal associated
with reward anticipation (Delgado, Gillis, & Phelps, 2008) in the Pavlovian learning phase
mediates the effect of the cue on self-control.
To deliver a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm online, I developed a novel task that could
be run on Qualtrics. Although more work may be needed to validate this conditioning procedure,
the ability to run Pavlovian conditioning studies online through an easily accessible platform has
significance for research on reward learning. Researchers can more easily test the
generalizability of Pavlovian-related findings across cultures and individual characteristics.
Furthermore, researchers can test the robustness of their findings by running the Pavlovian
conditioning paradigm outside of traditional lab environments.
Conclusion
Importantly, my studies suggest a route to take in developing context-based interventions
for adaptive behavior. Given my mixed but encouraging results on the effect of Pavlovian cues
on self-control, there is some promise in using Pavlovian conditioning to create cues that
promote positive outcomes, including good work ethic, healthy living, and financial foresight.
PAVLOVIAN CUES AND SELF-CONTROL 21
References
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Prior research has demonstrated that Pavlovian cues can invigorate instrumental response in a process known as Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT). Moreover, cues of one reward can invigorate action to obtain a different reward in a general form of PIT. In two online studies, I attempt to use this general PIT effect to increase self-control by presenting a Pavlovian cue associated with an Amazon gift card reward. Study 1 found that the Pavlovian cue only increases persistence on an impossible anagram task among participants who report greater desire for the gift card. Study 2 found a main effect of the Pavlovian cue, such that participants spend longer on anagrams when the Pavlovian cue is present than when a control cue is present. However, Study 2 did not replicate the interaction between cue and desire for the gift card from Study 1. I discuss differences between Study 1 and Study 2 that may have resulted in this inconsistency. I then discuss implications of my studies for our theoretical understanding of PIT, as well as the potential for building context-based interventions.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Wang, Peter
(author)
Core Title
Using Pavlovian cues to boost self-control
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Psychology
Publication Date
12/11/2018
Defense Date
12/14/2018
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University of Southern California
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Tag
classical,conditioning,Motivation,OAI-PMH Harvest,Pavlovian,persistence,reward,Self-control
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English
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Read, Stephen (
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), John, Richard (
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), Monterosso, John (
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)
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peterpwa@usc.edu,pwang222@gmail.com
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Tags
classical
conditioning
Pavlovian
persistence
reward