Author(s): Kyleigh McMullen, Tavish King
Mentor(s): Jared Nielsen
Institution BYU
Background: General feelings of motivation in everyday life can have an impact on decisions regarding physical and emotional health. In autistic individuals, many studies point to the fact that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are lower than their neurotypical peers. This study examined how general motivation and effort influence positive feelings in autistic and neurotypical adults throughout everyday life. We hypothesize that the relationship between motivation and positive emotion is weaker in autistic adults. We further hypothesize that the relationship between efforts to improve positive emotions and positive emotions is also weaker in autistic adults. Methods: Fifty-nine participants, including autistic adults (AUT; n = 32) and a neurotypical comparison group (NT; n = 27), completed daily surveys related to their experience of positive emotions (e.g., happy, excited) and level of motivation over the past 24 hours. We also asked participants if they had tried to improve positive emotions that day (yes/no). A multilevel model was used to examine associations between within-person motivation, efforts to improve positive emotions, and ratings of positive feelings. Results: Although our hypothesis predicted interaction effects, we found that including them did not improve the fit of the model, indicating that our predictors influence positive emotions similarly across groups. Within-person motivation was significantly associated with positive emotions (b = 3.73, SE = 0.26, p < .001), indicating that a 10-point increase in motivation was associated with a 3.73-point increase in positive emotions. Furthermore, within-person efforts to improve positive emotions was significantly associated with positive feelings (b = 2.70, SE = 0.39, p < .001), indicating that a one-unit increase in efforts to improve positive emotions was associated with a 2.7-point increase in positive emotions. Finally, autistic participants reported significantly lower positive emotions than the neurotypical comparison group (b = -7.80, SE = 3.44, p < .05). Conclusion: Though autistic adults rated themselves lower in positive emotions on average, they showed similar momentary increases in positive emotions as neurotypical adults when experiencing greater motivation and greater attempts to improve positive emotion. One limitation of our study is that type of motivation (e.g. intrinsic, extrinsic) was not specified, which may interact differently between autistic and neurotypical adults. Future research should focus on how different types of motivation predict emotions in autistic adults. These results offer insights into how motivation and effort influences well-being and may prove helpful in improving therapy outcomes for autistic adults.