Effect of social influence on effort-allocation for monetary rewards

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Jodi M. Gilman, Massachusetts General Hospital; Michael T. Treadway, Emory University; Max T. Curran, Massachusetts General Hospital; Vanessa Calderon, Massachusetts General Hospital; A. Eden Evins, Massachusetts General Hospital
• Language: English
• Date: 2015-05-11
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2015 Gilman et al.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126656
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: PLoS ONE
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 5
• Start Page: e0126656
• End Page: e0126656
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was supported by the Harvard Medical School Norman E. Zinberg Fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry Research (JMG); NIDA K01 DA034093 (JMG); NIMH K99 MH102355 (MTT); and NIDA K24 DA030443 (AEE).
• Keywords: Female; Reward; Male; Decision Making; Social Environment; Adult; Choice Behavior; Adolescent; Surveys and Questionnaires; Humans; Young Adult
• Research Categories: Psychology, Behavioral; Health Sciences, Mental Health

Abstract

Though decades of research have shown that people are highly influenced by peers, few studies have directly assessed how the value of social conformity is weighed against other types of costs and benefits. Using an effort-based decision-making paradigm with a novel social influence manipulation, we measured how social influence affected individuals' decisions to allocate effort for monetary rewards during trials with either high or low probability of receiving a reward. We found that information about the effort-allocation of peers modulated participant choices, specifically during conditions of low probability of obtaining a reward. This suggests that peer influence affects effort-based choices to obtain rewards especially under conditions of risk. This study provides evidence that people value social conformity in addition to other costs and benefits when allocating effort, and suggests that neuroeconomic studies that assess trade-offs between effort and reward should consider social environment as a factor that can influence decision-making.