Approach-avoidance responses are known to be influenced by the affective features of the stimuli cueing the response. Our preliminary work examined whether this influence extends to the predicted affective outcomes in a social context. In an initial experiment, performance was indeed facilitated when affective responses were followed by compatible outcomes (e.g., approach leading to a smile). However, when affective response cues were introduced and made relevant for the task goal (i.e., giving accurate approach/avoidance responses to smiling or angry expressions), the impact of outcome anticipation diminished. This raises the question of whether affective outcomes regain their influence when they are made relevant to a goal of comparable motivational significance.

The following study will test this hypothesis by embedding a context in which affective outcomes function as social feedback, thereby linking them to a social goal: gaining positive evaluations from others. To create a goal that is motivationally comparable to the task goal, two manipulations will be introduced. First, the response-outcome contingency will be made probabilistic, so that desired outcomes become uncertain but anticipatable. Second, participants will be told that the outcomes reflect evaluative judgments based partly on their personality, rendering the outcomes personally relevant and diagnostic of success for the social goal. This design enables us to investigate how affective cues and anticipated social outcomes compete or combine to guide approach-avoidance. Response times and facial electromyography will be used to capture automatic tendencies across conditions.