Are individual differences in appetitive and defensive motivation related? A psychophysiological examination in two samples

Appetitive and defensive motivation account for a good deal of variance in personality and mental health, but whether individual differences in these systems are correlated or orthogonal has not been conclusively established. Previous investigations have generally relied on self-report and have yiel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition and emotion 2014-05, Vol.28 (4), p.636-655
Main Authors: Sarapas, Casey, Katz, Andrea C., Nelson, Brady D., Campbell, Miranda L., Bishop, Jeffrey R., Robison-Andrew, E. Jenna, Altman, Sarah E., Gorka, Stephanie M., Shankman, Stewart A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Affectivity. Emotion
Aged
Anticipation
Anticipation, Psychological - physiology
Appetitive
Appetitive Behavior - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain Waves - physiology
Defensive
Electric Stimulation
Electroencephalography
Electrophysiology
Emotions
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Individual differences
Individuality
Male
Middle Aged
Motivation
Motivation - physiology
Negative affect
Personality
Personality. Affectivity
Positive affect
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychophysiological aspects
Psychophysiology
Reflex, Startle - physiology
Reward
Undergraduate students
Young Adult
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Summary:Appetitive and defensive motivation account for a good deal of variance in personality and mental health, but whether individual differences in these systems are correlated or orthogonal has not been conclusively established. Previous investigations have generally relied on self-report and have yielded conflicting results. We therefore assessed the relation between psychophysiological indices of appetitive and defensive motivation during elicitation of these motivational states: specifically, frontal electroencephalogram asymmetry during reward anticipation and startle response during anticipation of predictable or unpredictable threat of shock. Results in a sample of psychopathology-free community members (n=63), an independent sample of undergraduates with a range of internalising symptoms (n=64), and the combination of these samples (n=127) revealed that differences in responding to the two tasks were not significantly correlated. Average coefficients approached zero in all three samples (community: .04, undergraduate: −.01, combined: .06). Implications of these findings for research on normal and abnormal personality are discussed.
ISSN:0269-9931
1464-0600
DOI:10.1080/02699931.2013.848787