Toward diversification of acute stressors and precision stress research: Validation of a reward-salient stress task in emerging adults

Stress is one of, if not the, most ubiquitously studied risk factor across the health sciences. This unlikely to change given that the primary drivers of mortality and disability are chronic, stress-mediated illnesses (often highly comorbid with psychopathology). We argue that an important limitation of stress research is the consistency with which the Trier Social Stress Test is used when the research questions are not specific to social stress. We advocate for precision stress research using qualitatively different stressors to facilitate exploration of how different types of stressors might differentially impact health outcomes, including psychopathology. This registered report validates a reward-salient stress task (a modified Anger Incentive Delay Task; AIDT) in a sample of 101 emerging adults, over half of whom reported clinically relevant anxiety, hypo/mania, depression, and/or suicidal ideation, who participated in a study between 2020 and 2022. This task involves teaching participants a game where they can win money. Part way through, the “goal frustration” condition changes the rules such that correct responses to trials with anticipatory stimuli indicating the possibility to win money actually lose money on 56% of trials despite visual feedback indicating that responses were successful. Results consistently indicated that the AIDT successfully reduced positive emotions and motivation and increased negative emotions. The magnitude of these responses were predicted by individual differences in reward and punishment sensitivity. Given the breadth of psychopathologies that share both stress and reward and punishment sensitivity as risk factors, a reward-salient acute stress task is an important tool for precision psychopathology research.