Emotions and decision making in environments with differing rates of social and non-social reward

A person’s willingness to send a friend request to a stranger depends on how often they expect to be accepted—and that expectation shifts with the environment. This study tests how people make social and non-social decisions when rewards are either plentiful or scarce. Participants complete an online task where they choose whether to “friend” a face, with acceptance rates experimentally set high or low. A second task uses abstract symbols instead of faces to isolate what is unique about social decision-making. The researchers also measure personality traits and mood to see how these factors shape behaviour. The gap this fills is straightforward: most decision-making research uses money or points, not social acceptance, and rarely compares the two directly. If the work succeeds, it could improve how mental health apps or digital therapies are designed—for example, by accounting for how a person’s social environment (rich or poor in positive feedback) alters their choices. This is fundamental science; it clarifies a basic mechanism of human behaviour, with no immediate practical application. Similar work on reward learning has already informed treatments for depression and addiction.