Spontaneous instrumental avoidance learning in social contexts

Adaptation to our social environment requires learning how to avoid potentially harmful situations, such as encounters with aggressive individuals. Threatening facial expressions can evoke automatic stimulus-driven reactions, but whether their aversive motivational value suffices to drive instrumental active avoidance remains unclear. When asked to freely choose between different action alternatives, participants spontaneously—without instruction or monetary reward—developed a preference for choices that maximized the probability of avoiding angry individuals (sitting away from them in a waiting room). Most participants showed clear behavioral signs of instrumental learning, even in the absence of an explicit avoidance strategy. Inter-individual variability in learning depended on participants’ subjective evaluations and sensitivity to threat approach feedback. Counterfactual learning best accounted for avoidance behaviors, especially in participants who developed an explicit avoidance strategy. Our results demonstrate that implicit defensive behaviors in social contexts are likely the product of several learning processes, including instrumental learning.