Adaptive suppression of motivational biases increases with mood/anxiety traits

Changes in motivational biases appear at the heart of many psychiatric disorders. Alterations in motivational biases, in the form of invigorated responding when promised rewards, and holding back when threatened with punishment, have been observed in many psychiatric conditions including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. However, the specificity of these changes remains unclear. Here, we relate the (in)ability to suppress (maladaptive) motivational biases, to continuous, dimensional measures of psychiatric symptom levels in a sample from the general population focusing on mood-anxiety and impulsive-compulsive symptoms. Methods: We recruited an online sample from the general population (n = 500) through Prolific Academic, that performed a motivational Go/NoGo task, a cognitive test and a clinical questionnaire battery. We used factor analysis, mixed-effects regressions and computational modelling to link transdiagnostic symptom dimensions to the ability to adaptively suppress motivational biases. Results: We observed a double dissociation. Higher anxious-depressed symptoms predicted more suppression of motivational biases on trials on which these were incongruent with instrumental demands, resulting in better overall performance. Using a novel computational model, we show that this behaviour might arise from enhanced learning to flexibly suppress the impact of motivational biases. In contrast, higher compulsive symptom scores were associated with overall worse performance, likely reflecting a more general performance deficit. Discussion: We speculate that anxious-depressed individuals, showing heightened rumination and anxiety, might recruit excessive cognitive effort for suppressing motivational biases. This more ‘controlled’ mode of decision-making might lead to improved performance in tasks such as this one, but on the other hand exhaust participants and contribute to their symptoms.