Overcoming Automatic Behavioral Tendencies in Approach-Avoidance Conflict Decisions

Adequate control over automatic responses to affective stimuli is crucial for adaptive goal-oriented behavior. However, it remains unclear how individuals overcome automatic approach-avoidance tendencies to appetitive and aversive stimuli. Here we examined free versus forced approach-avoidance decisions to four conditioned stimuli (CSs), which were previously paired with either a single aversive (avCS+) or appetitive outcome (appCS+), both (i.e., conflicting) outcomes (confCS+), or no outcome (neuCS-). These CSs were presented in an anticipation phase before participants could use a joystick to either approach and obtain CS-specific outcomes or avoid without getting anything. Response times, subjective ratings, heart rate, and eye-tracking data were recorded in N = 75 participants. Results revealed that for single outcomes, concordant responses (e.g., avoidance to the avCS+) were faster than forced discordant responses (e.g., approach to the avCS+). During anticipation, gaze fixations shifted towards the spatial location associated with the concordant response for single-outcome stimuli (e.g., upward for avoidance of avCS+). Conflicting stimuli elicited intermediate behavioral and gaze patterns at the group level, while exploratory analyses revealed substantial individual differences: High avoiders (i.e., participants showing an overall high proportion of avoidance) exhibited slower approach responses and greater threat-focused visual attention compared to low avoiders. Decreased heart rate in response to all CSs suggests a general preparation of behavioral responses, while increased pupil dilation during the anticipation of aversive stimuli indicates threat-related processing. These findings suggest that competing outcomes can amplify individual differences in motivational salience and therefore might inspire clinical interventions focused on inhibiting disorder-specific behavioral tendencies.