Early contingency information enhances human punishment sensitivity when punishment is frequent but not rare.

Abstract

Individuals differ in sensitivity to the adverse consequences of their actions. We have shown that these differences can be linked to differences in correctly learning causal relationships between actions and their negative consequences. To further assess this, here we used a conditioned punishment task in 195 participants. Explicit punishment contingency information was provided before or after participants had experienced strong (40%) or weak (10%) punishment contingencies. We found the same phenotypes of human punishment learning reported previously (Jean-Richard-Dit-Bressel et al., 2021; Jean-Richard-Dit-Bressel et al., 2023). Early provision of punishment contingency information promoted punishment avoidance under strong punishment contingencies but was relatively ineffective under weak punishment contingencies. This persistent punishment insensitivity despite early contingency information was not due to habit learning or failure to understand the associative task structure. Rather, persistent insensitivity to punishment was due to a failure in integrating punishment contingency knowledge with action selection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).