The neural habituation to hedonic and eudaimonic rewards: Evidence from reward positivity

Rewards play an important role in people's well-being. However, the mechanisms underlying neural habituation to hedonic rewards (attainment of pleasure) and eudaimonic rewards (attainment of meaning and self-realization) and their implications for longitudinal changes in well-being remain unknown. By operationalizing hedonic rewards as "winning money for oneself" and eudaimonic rewards as "winning money for a charity", 78 participants (41 women, aged from 17 to 24 years) completed a revised monetary gambling task during event-related potential (ERP) recording. Subsequently, the participants' well-being was measured after one year. The results showed that the reward positivity (RewP) effect readily decreased as the hedonic rewards were repeated, whereas the RewP effect in response to eudaimonic rewards was relatively sustained over time. Moreover, the declining RewP effect for repeated eudaimonic rewards was marginally positively associated with longitudinal decreases in well-being. These findings demonstrate at the neural level that sensitivity to repeated hedonic rewards is more prone to decrease than sensitivity to repeated eudaimonic rewards, and sustained eudaimonic reward sensitivity in the short term has greater implications for changes in well-being in the long term.