Capturing individual differences in social motivation using a novel interactive task

Abstract Extensive brain and behavioral research indicates that humans are motivated to interact socially. Most research on social reward, however, employs decontextualized social stimuli (e.g., photographs of faces), leaving open questions about which components of interaction are most rewarding and whether their relative value differs across people. We designed a novel text-based chat paradigm to quantify preferences to self-disclose versus learn about a social partner. Crucially, although participants believed they were interacting with a real person, the chat partner was simulated, allowing for rigorous experimental control. Across a series of trials, participants chose between sharing about themselves, learning about their partner, or learning a non-social trivia fact. Each choice was paired with a monetary value to precisely titrate the subjective reward of each option. At the group level, participants preferred learning about their partner. Additionally, participants who showed the greatest motivation for social learning had higher perspective taking and social cognitive skills, lower levels of narcissism, and lower levels of social media dependence. Overall, results suggest that individual differences in the reward value of particular components of social interaction may correlate with real-world traits and behaviors, with implications for measuring and understanding variability in human social experience.