Abstract
Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing. Recent findings suggest dynamic bidirectional optimism-attention interactions, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain to be identified. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, therefore, investigated the neural mechanisms underlying causal effects of optimistic expectancies on attention. We hypothesized that expectancies guide attention to confirmatory evidence in the environment, with enhanced salience and executive control network (SN/ECN) activity for unexpected information. Moreover, based on previous findings, we anticipated optimistic expectancies to more strongly impact attention and SN/ECN activity than pessimistic expectancies. Expectancies were induced with visual cues in 50 participants; subsequent attention to reward and punishment was assessed in a visual search task. As hypothesized, cues shortened reaction times to expected information, and unexpected information enhanced SN/ECN activity. Notably, these effects were stronger for optimistic than pessimistic expectancy cues. Our findings suggest that optimistic expectancies involve particularly strong predictions of reward, causing automatic guidance of attention to reward and great surprise about unexpected punishment. Such great surprise may be counteracted by visual avoidance of the punishing evidence, as revealed by prior evidence, thereby reducing the need to update (over)optimistic reward expectancies.
Highlights
Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing
In line with our asymmetry hypothesis, attention deployment to congruent compared with incongruent targets differed more strongly following optimistic rather than pessimistic expectancies: Optimistic expectancies accelerated behavioral responses to gain compared with loss targets more than pessimistic expectancies accelerated reactions to loss compared with gain targets, t(49) = 2.760, p = 0.004, d = 0.541 (DiffGainCue: M = 483 ms/SE = 52 ms, DiffLossCue: M = 267 ms/SE = 60 ms)
On the neural level, processing of incongruent compared with congruent targets resulted in stronger activation in the bilateral AI (SN), a large bilateral cluster comprising the PPC extending into occipital areas, a bilateral cluster comprising the supplementary motor area (SMA) extending into the medial frontal gyrus (MeFG) and DACC, bilateral clusters comprising frontal lobe areas, as well as bilateral clusters in the visual cortex extending into the PCC
Summary
Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing. Cues shortened reaction times to expected information, and unexpected information enhanced SN/ECN activity These effects were stronger for optimistic than pessimistic expectancy cues. We proposed a bidirectional interplay, namely (a) optimistic expectancies guide attention to positive information in the environment, and (b) directing attention to positive information enhances optimism bias[11]. These suggestions are supported by recent empirical findings revealing that induced optimistic expectancies causally influence attention deployment[12] and that learning to direct one’s attention to positive information through attention bias modification training enhances optimism bias[13]. One might go a step further and target divergences and commonalities related to different biases – in health as in psychopathology (e.g. maladaptive cognitions in depression)[11]
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