Instrumental learning of social affiliation through outcome and intention.

To build social ties, humans need to find others who want to interact with them. How do people learn, over time, to interact with partners who want to affiliate with them? Theories of social cognition suggest that people try to infer whether others value them, but theories of instrumental learning suggest that rewarding outcomes reinforce choices. In three studies, we provide evidence that both social acceptance outcomes and cues to a partner's acceptance intentions reinforce social partner choices. Even when outcomes were experimentally dissociated from a partner's intentions, outcomes influenced how people felt, which partners people chose, and how well people believed they were liked by partners. Finally, people acted kindlier both to partners who demonstrated acceptance intentions and to partners who provided acceptance outcomes. These findings support an integrative instrumental learning model of social affiliation, wherein social cognition and rewarding outcomes jointly shape affect, partner choice, and prosocial behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).