Escalating frustration - A replication attempt and extension of Yu et al. (2014)

Manuscript published here: https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.17749.1

Obstacles in acquiring a desired reward, such as losing money when gambling, can lead to frustration. In gambling, this frustration has been shown in form of speeded responses after losses compared to wins and non-gambling trials. Moreover, blocked rewards such losses can lead to more forceful responses, which may also reflect frustration. Previous work by Yu and colleagues (2014) showed that the level of frustration triggered by a blocked reward was independently influenced by the proximity to the reward and the effort that was exerted to acquire the reward when reward blockage occurred. They found that both being close to the reward and having invested much effort in getting the reward increased the force of the participants’ responses and their retrospective self-reported frustration when they were eventually blocked. In this study, we will try to directly replicate the findings of Yu and colleagues (2014) by using the same experimental procedure (i.e., with self-reported motivation and frustration as well as response speed and response force). Additionally, to obtain a more online and objective measure of (negative) emotions, we will measure facial electromyographic activity over the corrugator supercilii (frowning muscle) and the zygomaticus (smiling muscle). Apart from replicating the findings by Yu and colleagues, we expect higher activity over the corrugator when being blocked from a reward and higher activity over the zygomaticus when winning a reward. We will also examine to what extent the activity over the corrugator may be correlated with both response speed and response force, as a reflection of how frustrated participants are. We will discuss the results of our (extended) replication attempt in the context of the emotional nature of wins and losses and potentially near-misses in gambling.