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Updated: Feb 13, 2026

Post-Movie Subliminal Measurement PMSM, for Investigating Implicit Social Bias
Published on: February 29, 2020
Comparison of choose-a-movie and approach-avoidance paradigms to measure social motivation
Indu Dubey1, Danielle Ropar2, Antonia Hamilton3
11School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Harry Pitt Building, Earley Gate, Reading, RG6 6AL UK.
Abstract:
Social motivation is a subjective state which is rather difficult to quantify. It has sometimes been conceptualised as "behavioural effort" to seek social contact. Two paradigms: approach-avoidance (AA) and choose a movie (CAM), based on the same conceptualisation, have been used to measure social motivation in people with and without autism. However, in absence of a direct comparison, it is hard to know which of these paradigms has higher sensitivity in estimating preference for social over non-social stimuli. Here we compare these two tasks for their utility in (1) evaluating social seeking in typical people and (2) identifying the influence of autistic traits on social motivation. Our results suggest that CAM reveals a clear preference for social stimuli over non-social in typical adults but AA fails to do so. Also, social seeking measured with CAM but not AA has a negative relationship between autistic traits.
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