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+). Participants showed more balanced approach-avoidance behaviors to conflicting stimuli for free responses and modestly reduced response times for forced responses. Gaze behavior during anticipation of single outcomes reflected the concordant behavioral option, while conflicting stimuli yielded a more balanced gaze distribution. Decreased heart rate in response to all CSs suggests a general preparation of behavioral responses, while increased pupil dilation specifically when anticipating aversive stimuli indicates threat-related processing. These findings suggest that competing outcomes moderately facilitate behavioral inhibition in approach-avoidance conflicts, and they might inspire clinical interventions focused on inhibiting disorder-specific behavioral tendencies.