Examining tradeoffs between cognitive effort and relief among adults with self-injurious behavior.

Autor: Franz PJ; Psychiatry Research Institute at Montefiore Einstein (PRIME), Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, United States of America; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America. Electronic address: Peter.Franz18@gmail.com., Fortgang RG; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States of America., Millner AJ; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America; Franciscan Children's Hospital, United States of America., Jaroszewski AC; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States of America., Wittler EM; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America; Psychosocial Research Program, Butler Hospital, United States of America., Alpert JE; Psychiatry Research Institute at Montefiore Einstein (PRIME), Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, United States of America., Buckholtz JW; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States of America., Nock MK; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States of America; Franciscan Children's Hospital, United States of America.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of affective disorders [J Affect Disord] 2023 Jan 15; Vol. 321, pp. 320-328. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Oct 24.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.10.029
Abstrakt: Background: People engage in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) to reduce negative affect, but it is not clear why they engage in this harmful type of behavior instead of using healthier strategies. The primary goal of this study was to evaluate whether people choose NSSI to reduce negative affect because they perceive it to be less cognitively costly than other available strategies.
Method: In experiment one, 43 adults completed a novel, relief-based effort discounting task designed to index preferences about exerting cognitive effort to achieve relief. In experiment two, 149 adults, 52 % with a history of NSSI, completed our effort discounting task.
Results: Our main results suggest that people will accept less relief from an aversive experience if doing so requires expending less effort, i.e. they demonstrate effort discounting in the context of decisions about relief. We also found and that effort discounting is stronger among those with a history of NSSI, but this association became nonsignificant when simultaneously accounting for other conditions associated with aberrant effort tradeoffs.
Limitations: The use of a control group without NSSI or other potentially harmful relief-seeking behaviors limits our ability to draw specific conclusions about NSSI. The ecological validity of our task was limited by a modestly effective affect manipulation, and because participants made hypothetical choices.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that preferences about exerting cognitive effort may be a barrier to using healthier affect regulation strategies. Further, the preference not to exert cognitive effort, though present in NSSI, is likely not unique to NSSI. Instead, effort discounting may be a transdiagnostic mechanism promoting an array of harmful relief-seeking behaviors.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Dr. Nock receives publication royalties from Macmillan, Pearson, and UpToDate. He has been a paid consultant in the past year for Microsoft Corporation, the Veterans Health Administration, Cerebral Inc., and for a legal case regarding a death by suicide. He is an unpaid scientific advisor for Empatica, Koko, and TalkLife. The additional authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
(Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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