Affective motivations for substance misuse differentially relate to consideration of multiple costs during effortful decision making.

Abstract

Heightened sensitivity to costs during decision making consistently has been related to substance use. However, no work in this area has manipulated cost information to examine how people evaluate and compare multiple costs. Furthermore, limited work has examined how affective motivations for substance use modulate the evaluation of cost information. We administered a loss-frame variant of the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task in a diverse community sample (N = 126). Individuals who use substances to avoid negative affect allocated comparable effort across varying likelihoods of loss and computational modeling parameters indicated that they did not systematically consider cost information, which ultimately led these individuals to exert effort when it was disadvantageous to do so. Individuals who use substances to enhance positive affect allocated effort when loss magnitudes were small, suggesting that they effectively compared costs and worked to minimize those costs. Motivations for substance use differentially relate to the comparison of costly information, ultimately influencing effective decision making. Substance use problems are a common issue in the United States, with over 100 million people engaging in problematic use in the past year. This study suggests that people who use substances to avoid negative feelings have difficulty comparing different costs, which paradoxically lead them to work harder for costlier choices. Conversely, people who use substances to feel good effectively compare costs and work to minimize those costs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)