# The Effect of Social Influence on Effort-Cost Decision-Making in Schizophrenia: From Mechanisms to Real-World Associations

> **NIH NIH F31** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $48,974

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ ABSTRACT
Deficits in motivated behavior and effort-cost decision-making (ECDM) are core to schizophrenia and related
disorders (SZ). ECDM paradigms show that SZ are less likely to use contextual information (e.g., reward
magnitude and probability) to drive decisions about whether to exert high effort for rewards. As such, they are
less likely to expend effort in situations when it would benefit them the most to do so. These motivational deficits
have been closely linked to functional outcomes and their treatment remains ineffective, highlighting the need to
examine factors that could enhance ECDM in SZ. Social influence (e.g., the presence of information about peer
decisions) has been shown to drive ECDM in healthy individuals (HC), particularly in conditions of low reward or
probability (when the other contextual factors may be less likely to independently do so). While there is very little
literature examining the role of social influence on effort in SZ, there is some evidence that SZ may increase
effort expenditure in response to social encouragement and that (unlike in HC) this may particularly be the case
in conditions of high reward magnitude. Thus, social factors could enhance ECDM in SZ by increasing effort in
the conditions in which it would be most beneficial to do so-- conditions in which SZ demonstrate the most
impairments. Consistent with behavioral findings that SZ are less likely to use reward-related information to
inform effortful decisions, they also may show reduced reward-related modulation in neural regions associated
with effective ECDM: ventral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex. Interestingly,
these regions overlap with those involved in response to peer information and social reward, raising the
possibility that social information may modulate decisions about effort in SZ by activating neural systems that
play a role in effective ECDM. Further, to understand whether and for whom these laboratory-based neural and
behavioral markers of social influence on ECDM might lead to functional benefit in SZ, it is critical to examine
how they relate to individual differences in real-world reports of social motivation. Thus, this proposal seeks to
use a multimethod framework (e.g., behavioral task, fMRI, EMA) to examine whether social information
modulates decisions about effort expenditure in SZ as it does in HC, the neural bases of these decisions, and
real-world individual differences in social motivation that are associated with this relationship. Results from the
proposed study could elucidate the nature of social and motivational impairments in SZ and inform intervention
efforts to ameliorate these impairing deficits. The realization of this project will allow the applicant to receive
training in: 1) neuroimaging techniques and analysis, 2) the link between social processes and motivated
behavior in SZ, 3) EMA design, collection and analysis, 4) research rigor and reproduci...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10891426
- **Project number:** 5F31MH132276-02
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Jaisal Taara Merchant
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $48,974
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-07-05 → 2025-07-04

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10891426

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10891426, The Effect of Social Influence on Effort-Cost Decision-Making in Schizophrenia: From Mechanisms to Real-World Associations (5F31MH132276-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10891426. Licensed CC0.

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