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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 2, 2025

A Conflict Model of Reward-seeking Behavior in Male Rats

A Conflict Model of Reward-seeking Behavior in Male Rats

Published on: February 20, 2019

Humans perseverate on punishment avoidance goals in multigoal reinforcement learning.

Paul B Sharp^1,2,3, Evan M Russek^2,3, Quentin J M Huys^2,4

¹The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.

|February 24, 2022

Summary

Humans are less flexible in avoiding punishment than pursuing rewards. This difficulty in disengaging from punishment avoidance may be linked to chronic worry in anxious individuals.

Keywords:

anxiety human multitask neuroscience reinforcement learning

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Last Updated: Oct 2, 2025

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Behavioral Economics
Clinical Psychology

Background:

Effective adaptation requires managing multiple, often competing, goals.
Understanding the cognitive mechanisms of goal management, particularly reward seeking and punishment avoidance, is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how humans balance reward seeking and punishment avoidance goals.
To explore the relationship between goal management flexibility and anxiety, specifically chronic worry.

Main Methods:

Development of a novel multigoal pursuit task with trial-specific reward or punishment goals.
Utilizing a computational model to quantify goal disengagement and resource allocation.
Assessing 192 participants, including those with chronic worry.

Main Results:

Participants demonstrated less flexibility in avoiding punishment compared to pursuing rewards.
Individuals often persisted in avoiding previously punished cues even when benign.
No significant downregulation of avoidance was observed when punishment avoidance goals were less abundant.
Preliminary evidence suggests individuals with chronic worry struggle to disengage from punishment avoidance when instructed to seek reward.

Conclusions:

Human behavior is characterized by less flexible punishment avoidance than reward seeking.
Difficulty disengaging from punishment avoidance may be a contributing factor to chronic worry.
Further research in larger samples is warranted to confirm the link between punishment avoidance inflexibility and chronic worry.