Information Processing Biases Research Articles

Is the association between childhood maltreatment and aggressive behavior mediated by hostile attribution bias in women? A discordant twin and sibling study.

Understanding the mechanisms behind aggressive behavior (AGG) is vital so that effective prevention and intervention strategies can be developed. Maltreated children are hypothesized to be prone to social information processing biases, such as hostile attribution bias (HAB), which, in turn, may increase the likelihood of behaving aggressively. The first aim of the present study was to replicate findings regarding associations between childhood maltreatment (CM), HAB, and aggression in a population‐based sample of Finnish female twins and their sisters (N = 2,167). However, these associations might not be causal but instead confounded by familial factors, shared between the variables. The second aim was, thus, to test the associations when potential confounding by familial (genetic or common environmental) effects were controlled for using a multilevel discordant twin and sibling design within (a) 379 pairs of twins (n pairs = 239) or siblings (n pairs = 140), and (b) within the 131 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs. Consistent with previous studies, HAB mediated the association between CM and AGG when familial confounding was uncontrolled. No support was found for the mediation when controlling for familial confounding. Between‐pair associations were found between CM and AGG, and between CM and HAB. In addition, within‐pair associations were found between HAB and AGG, and between CM and AGG, however, these were nonsignificant in the discordant MZ analysis, offering the most stringent control of familial confounding. The results indicate the necessity of taking familial confounding into account when investigating the development of AGG.

Accidental and Ambiguous Situations Reveal Specific Social Information Processing Biases and Deficits in Adolescents with Low Intellectual Level and Clinical Levels of Externalizing Behavior

Addressing aggression in youth requires understanding of the range of social problem situations that may lead to biased social information processing (SIP). The present study investigated situation-specificity of SIP and analyzed whether SIP deficits and biases are found in ambiguous as well as clearly accidental situations in adolescents with clinical levels of externalizing behavior or with low intellectual level, congruent with mild intellectual disability. Adolescents (N = 220, Mage = 15.21) completed a SIP test on a mobile app with six videos with ambiguous, hostile, and accidental social problems. Caretakers, teachers, and adolescents themselves reported on youth externalizing behavior problems. In accidental situations specifically, adolescents with low IQ scores more often attributed purposeful intent to perpetrators than peers with borderline or average IQ scores. In accidental situations, adolescents with clinical levels of externalizing behavior generated and selected more aggressive responses than nonclinical adolescents, regardless of their cognitive level. In line with previous literature, the ambiguous situations also brought out SIP differences between IQ groups. These results suggest that not only ambiguous situations should be considered informative for understanding SIP biases, but situations in which adolescents are clearly accidentally disadvantaged bring out SIP biases as well, that may lead to conflicts with others.

The Art and Science of Disagreeing: How to Create More Effective Conversations About Opposing Views

Disagreement is an unavoidable part of social life. Because no two people hold identical beliefs, knowledge, values, or goals, opposing viewpoints are bound to arise at some point in the pursuit of personal and collective interests in professional organizations, civic spaces, and personal relationships. A large literature has suggested that engaging with diverse viewpoints can create numerous benefits. However, people often struggle to handle disagreement constructively. The presence of contradictory opinions often gives rise to negative affect, biased information processing, and negative inferences about the other side, resulting in either argumentation and escalated conflicts or disengagement and avoidance. Such reactions keep people from reaping the benefits of diverse viewpoints and threaten the prosperity of organizations and our society as a whole. How can people engage with disagreement more effectively through dialogues? This symposium aims to introduce four innovative empirical papers that investigate different aspects of effective conversations about opposing views ranging from affective experiences to communication medium and language to interpersonal processes. Each paper identifies an important barrier to effective communication and offers a unique practical solution to help people create more productive conversations when disagreement arises. Moreover, this symposium showcases a broad range of research methods for studying conflict of opinions, including randomized experiments in lab and field settings, archival analysis, content analysis, and machine learning techniques. Taken together, this symposium provides attendees interested in communication and conflicts in organizational and civic life with new ideas and methodologies for future research as well as insights into effective interventions to meet a wide variety of communication challenges. The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Counter-Arguing Presenter: Charles A. Dorison; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Presenter: Julia Alexandra Minson; Harvard Kennedy School Resolving Conflict Through Conversation: The Role of Communication Medium in Conflict Outcomes Presenter: Juliana Schroeder; U. of California, Berkeley Conversational Receptiveness: Improving Engagement with Opposing Views Presenter: Michael Yeomans; Harvard Business School Thank You, Because...: Discussing Differences While Finding Common Ground Presenter: Xuan Zhao; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Presenter: Heather M. Caruso; UCLA Anderson School of Management Presenter: Jane Risen; U. of Chicago Booth School of business

Association between depression and hostile attribution bias in hostile and non-hostile individuals: An ERP study

BackgroundHostility and aggression have been found to be highly prevalent among depressed patients and are associated with higher comorbidity and illness severity levels. Although negative interpretation biases are a fundamental element of cognitive models of depression, few studies have examined the specific biases in information processing, mainly the hostile attribution bias, found in hostile individuals who present depressive symptoms. MethodUsing pre-collected data from a sample of 72 (male=41,6%, female=58,3%) undergraduate and community-based hostile (n = 26) and non-hostile (n = 46) adult participants, the authors aimed to examine the association between depression and the hostile attribution bias by determining whether depression level scores were uniquely related to electrophysiological measures of the hostile attribution bias. ResultsThe hostile group showed higher measured levels of depression and reactive aggression compared to the non-hostile group. Also, depression scores were significant predictors of the N400 effect in the non-hostile task condition, while reactive aggression was not, whereas in the hostile condition, the overall model was significant, with depression and reactive aggression levels both showing strong trends towards significance. LimitationsA small sample size limited the scope of our conclusions. Also, sample selection prevented us from examining specific group differences regarding the hostile attribution bias in depressed and non-depressed groups. ConclusionClinical and research implications include the necessity to apply cognitive restructuring techniques to counter biased interpretation processes in settings where depression and aggression intersect, and the need to consider alternatives to self-evaluative methodologies.

When Pundits Weigh In: Do Expert and Partisan Critiques in News Reports Shape Ordinary Individuals’ Interpretations of Polls?

ABSTRACT Journalists rely on polls as they cover public opinion. In order to provide perspectives within the news stories, journalists frequently quote pundits – expert and partisan – who evaluate the methodological quality and implications of the numbers. While partisan pundits might attack unfavorable polls as biased and even fake, experts typically provide rational assessments of methodological quality; news readers may also encounter critiques of the reliability of polls in general in op-eds. How do Americans evaluate polls when they come accompanied with such commentaries? Building on evidence that individuals perceive polls in biased ways, this study examines whether and how individuals react to pundit commentary and whether such commentary can increase or decrease partisan bias in evaluations. In a nationally representative survey experiment fielded during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we exposed 2,078 individuals to news stories about polls that included various expert or partisan comments. Although commentaries shifted perceptions of the polls, they did little to mitigate or amplify news readers’ biases. We conclude that poll commentary is not an effective tool for mitigating bias. Implications for public perceptions, corrective attempts against biased processing of statistical information in news reports, and journalistic coverage at large are discussed.

Bayesian or biased? Analytic thinking and political belief updating

A surprising finding from U.S. opinion surveys is that political disagreements tend to be greatest among the most cognitively sophisticated opposing partisans. Recent experiments suggest a hypothesis that could explain this pattern: cognitive sophistication magnifies politically biased processing of new information. However, the designs of these experiments tend to contain several limitations that complicate their support for this hypothesis. In particular, they tend to (i) focus on people's worldviews and political identities, at the expense of their other, more specific prior beliefs, (ii) lack direct comparison with a politically unbiased benchmark, and (iii) focus on people's judgments of new information, rather than on their posterior beliefs following exposure to the information. We report two studies designed to address these limitations. In our design, U.S. subjects received noisy but informative signals about the truth or falsity of partisan political questions, and we measured their prior and posterior beliefs, and cognitive sophistication, operationalized as analytic thinking inferred via performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test. We compared subjects' posterior beliefs to an unbiased Bayesian benchmark. We found little evidence that analytic thinking magnified politically biased deviations from the benchmark. In contrast, we found consistent evidence that greater analytic thinking was associated with posterior beliefs closer to the benchmark. Together, these results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that cognitive sophistication magnifies politically biased processing. We discuss differences between our design and prior work that can inform future tests of this hypothesis.

Amygdala and ventral tegmental area differentially interact with hippocampus and cortical medial temporal lobe during rest in humans.

Neuromodulatory regions that detect salience, such as amygdala and ventral tegmental area (VTA), have distinct effects on memory. Yet, questions remain about how these modulatory regions target subregions across the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe (MTL) cortex. Here, we sought to characterize how VTA and amygdala subregions (i.e., basolateral amygdala and central-medial amygdala) interact with hippocampus head, body, and tail, as well as cortical MTL areas of perirhinal cortex and parahippocampal cortex in a task-free state. To quantify these interactions, we used high-resolution resting state fMRI and characterized pair-wise, partial correlations across regions-of-interest. We found that basolateral amygdala showed greater functional coupling with hippocampus head, hippocampus tail, and perirhinal cortex when compared to either VTA or central-medial amygdala. Furthermore, the VTA showed greater functional coupling with hippocampus tail when compared to central-medial amygdala. There were no significant differences in functional coupling with hippocampus body and parahippocampal cortex. These results support a framework by which neuromodulatory regions do not indiscriminately influence all MTL subregions equally, but rather bias information processing to discrete MTL targets. These findings provide a more specified model of the intrinsic properties of systems underlying MTL neuromodulation. This emphasizes the need to consider heterogeneity both across and within neuromodulatory systems to better understand affective memory.

Credibility Perceptions and Detection Accuracy of Fake News Headlines on Social Media: Effects of Truth-Bias and Endorsement Cues

This article focuses on message credibility and detection accuracy of fake and real news as represented on social media. We developed a deception detection paradigm for news headlines and conducted two online experiments to examine the extent to which people (1) perceive news headlines as credible, and (2) accurately distinguish fake and real news across three general topics (i.e., politics, science, and health). Both studies revealed that people often judged news headlines as fake, suggesting a deception-bias for news in social media. Across studies, we observed an average detection accuracy of approximately 51%, a level consistent with most research using this deception detection paradigm with equal lie-truth base-rates. Study 2 evaluated the effects of endorsement cues in social media (e.g., Facebook likes) on message credibility and detection accuracy. Results showed that headlines associated with a high number of Facebook likes increased credibility, thereby enhancing detection accuracy for real news but undermining accuracy for fake news. These studies introduce truth-default theory to the context of news credibility and advance our understanding of how biased processing of news information can impact detection accuracy with social media endorsement cues.

Do adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) and co-morbid anxiety and/or depressive symptoms think differently to those who do not have co-morbid psychopathology?

BackgroundCo-morbid anxiety and/or depression is common in adolescents with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME). Adolescents with psychopathology typically endorse more negative cognitive errors. We do not know whether they make negative cognitive errors in response to fatigue. We examined the thinking patterns of adolescents with CFS/ME and co-morbid psychopathology compared to those without this co-morbidity. MethodsThis cross-sectional study recruited 205 adolescents (age 11–18) with CFS/ME, who completed measures of anxiety and depression, information processing biases and responses to fatigue. We grouped participants as having co-morbid psychopathology (or not) by applying a threshold score. We compared groups’ thinking pattern subscale scores using independent samples T tests. We examined the association between psychopathology and general negative thinking and specific responses to fatigue symptoms. ResultsAdolescents with CFS/ME with co-morbid psychopathology more strongly endorsed general negative cognitive errors (d = 0.61–1.31). They also more strongly endorsed damage beliefs (d = 0.49), embarrassment avoidance (d = 1.05), catastrophising (d = 0.97) and symptom focusing (d = 0.75) in response to fatigue but did not differ significantly on fear avoidance from those without co-morbid psychopathology. Both negative cognitive errors and unhelpful responses to symptoms explained 43% of the variance in psychopathology. ConclusionsAdolescents with CFS/ME with co-morbid psychopathology tend to be negatively biased in their thinking, both generally and about their symptoms of fatigue specifically. This may have implications for the sequencing of cognitive and behavioural strategies to address both fatigue and psychopathology.

Unfolding irrationality: how do meaningful coincidences influence management decisions?

Purpose This study aims to answer the following research question: “How do meaningful coincidences influence management decisions?” This question has gained relevance mainly because of the increasing attention of scholars in explaining the irrational pressures that shape management decisions, which should be inevitably taken into account to discover the causative factors of firms’ performances. Design/methodology/approach A multiparadigm approach to theory building has been adopted, known as “metatriangulation.” This study consisted of exploring the interplay between the synchronicity concept of Jung and cognitive studies. As a result, this work proposes a conceptual framework that refers to both sensemaking and cognitive decision-making literature. Findings The framework proposes that the perceived certainty (or not) about the potential outcome for the well-being, coming from the occurrence of meaningful coincidences, elicits a set of positive (or negative) affective states. These states activate a series of cognitive errors that drive the assignment of a symbolic content to the coincidences, bringing different risk-oriented management decisions. Research limitations/implications The provided model is purely conceptual and based on the current pool of knowledge available. As much as empirical evidence will be produced, this model may need revision. This framework proposes the interpretation of meaningful coincidences not only as the output of a number of information processing biases, but also as inputs, through the elicited affect heuristic, for the occurrence of other cognitive errors that drive management decisions. Practical implications The explained influence of irrational forces on management decisions, also considering luck and chance, can be fruitful to avoid these behaviors or to intentionally adopt them in selected cases, e.g. when looking for attractive unexploited opportunities within markets. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first work that attempts to unveil the impact of meaningful coincidences and, more in general, of irrational forces on management decisions. Moreover, the provided framework explains how superstitious events are sometimes looked for to guide decision-making.

Uncovering the Environmental and Social Conflicts Behind Residents’ Perception of CBT: A Case of Perak, Malaysia

ABSTRACT This paper examines an indigenous community’s perception of community-based tourism (CBT), using the revised social exchange theory (SET) that recognizes the limits of rationality in explaining behaviour and therefore integrates other exchange rules. Unlike most quantitative SET studies that describe residents’ perception without explaining the root cause; this qualitative study investigates prior conditioning from socio-cultural background and potential biased information processing as the underlying reasons of residents’ perception. An indigenous community’s negative perception may be caused by long standing disruption of livelihood from human-wildlife conflict and other non-tourism causes. Livelihood losses aggravate socio-economic deprivations and magnify the expectation for income replacement, such that where tourism income is inadequate, the perceived costs of tourism is amplified. Managing income expectation is therefore crucial in CBT planning. An over-optimistic representation of CBT as a source of livelihood may diminish the role of tourism in conservation conflict management.

Mapping Dynamic Interactions Among Cognitive Biases in Depression

Depression is theorized to be caused in part by biased cognitive processing of emotional information. Yet, prior research has adopted a reductionist approach that does not characterize how biases in cognitive processes such as attention and memory work together to confer risk for this complex multifactorial disorder. Grounded in affective and cognitive science, we highlight four mechanisms to understand how attention biases, working memory difficulties, and long-term memory biases interact and contribute to depression. We review evidence for each mechanism and highlight time- and context-dependent dynamics. We outline methodological considerations and recommendations for research in this area. We conclude with directions to advance the understanding of depression risk, cognitive training interventions, and transdiagnostic properties of cognitive biases and their interactions.

D-cycloserine as adjunct to brief computerised CBT for spider fear: Effects on fear, behaviour, and cognitive biases

Background and objectivesIn anxiety disorders, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) improves information-processing biases such as implicit fear evaluations and avoidance tendencies, which predicts treatment response. Thus, these cognitive biases might constitute important treatment targets. This study investigated (i) whether information-processing biases could be changed following single-session computerised CBT for spider fear, and (ii) whether this effect could be augmented by administration of D-cycloserine (DCS). MethodsSpider-fearful individuals were randomized to receiving either 250 mg of DCS (n = 21) or placebo (n = 17). Three hours after drug administration, they received single-session computerized CBT, characterized by psychoeducation and exposure elements. Spider fear was assessed using self-report, behavioural, and information processing (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task & Approach Avoidance Task) measures at baseline (before drug administration), post-treatment, 1-day, and 1-month follow-up. ResultsLinear mixed-effects analyses indicated significant improvements on self-report and behavioural spider fear indices following CBT, but not on cognitive bias measures. There was no evidence of an augmentation effect of DCS on any outcome. Cognitive bias measures at 1-day were not predictive of 1-month follow-up spider fear in adjusted linear regression analyses. LimitationsResults might be biased by limited representativeness of the sample (high education and intelligence, largely Caucasian ethnicity, young age). The study was also only powered for detection of medium-sized DCS effects. ConclusionsThese findings do not provide evidence for information-processing biases relating to treatment outcome following computerised CBT for spider fear or augmentation with DCS.

Covariation bias in depression - a predictor of treatment response?

Covariation bias, defined as an overestimation of the relationship between fear-relevant stimuli and aversive consequences, is a well-investigated cognitive bias in anxiety disorders. As patients with affective disorders also show biased information processing, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether depressed patients also display a covariation bias between negative stimuli and aversive consequences. Covariation estimates of 62 inpatients with a current severe depressive episode were assessed at admission (n = 31) or after 6weeks of treatment (n = 31) and were compared in a between-group design with 31 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. All participants showed a covariation bias for the relationship between negative stimuli and aversive consequences. Moreover, covariation bias at admission was significantly associated with various clinician- and self-reported dimensional measures of treatment response assessed 6weeks later (Global Assessment of Functioning, Clinical Global Impression Scale, and Beck Depression Inventory), i.e., patients with a stronger bias showed greater impairment after 6weeks of treatment. Categorical analyses revealed that overall, treatment non-responders-but not responders-were characterized by a covariation bias. The naturalistic study design without standardized pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments is a central limitation. We conclude that the covariation bias may constitute a possible marker in the field of emotional information processing in the search for effective predictors of therapy outcome.

Using response time modeling to understand the sources of dual-task interference in a dynamic environment.

This article examines the causes of dual-task interference in a time pressured dynamic environment. Resource sharing theories are often used as a theoretical framework to understand dual-task interference. These frameworks propose that resources from a limited pool of information-processing capacity are reallocated toward the primary task as task load increases and, as a result, secondary-task performance declines if the total demand exceeds capacity limit. However, tests of resource models have relied on behavioral results that could be because of a number of different cognitive processes, including changes in response caution, rate of information processing, nondecision processes, and response biases. We applied evidence-accumulation models to quantify the cognitive processes underlying performance in a dual-task paradigm to examine the causes underlying dual-task interference. We fit performance in time-pressured environment on both a primary classification task and a secondary detection task using evidence-accumulation models. Under greater time pressure, the rate of information processing increased for the primary task while response caution decreased, whereas the rate of information processing for the secondary task declined with greater time pressure. Assuming the rate of evidence accumulation is proportional to available capacity these results are consistent with resource theory and highlight the value of evidence-accumulation models for understanding the complex set of processes underlying dual-task interference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

An uninformed electorate: identity-motivated elaboration, partisan cues, and learning

ABSTRACTA deliberative democracy is reliant on an informed electorate discussing issues and presenting persuasive arguments. Individuals acquire information from exposure to political messages. Partisan cues, however, undermine learning outcomes. The current study experimentally examines the social cognitive processes that underlie this learning process. Integrating the social identity theory, elaboration likelihood model, and the theory of motivated reasoning to construct the theoretical concept of identity-motivated elaboration, the results indicate that partisan social identities motivate biased processing of new information, which subsequently influences the valence of elaboration. Positively and negatively valenced elaboration are situated as mediating variables in the structural model, which predicts learning from a persuasive political message. The current study extends the partisan social identity hypothesis to the elaborative and learning outcomes of political messages.

Do management earnings forecasts fully reflect information in past earnings changes?

Purpose It has been widely documented that investors and analysts underreact to information in past earnings changes, a fundamental performance indicator. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether managers’ voluntary disclosure efficiently incorporates information in past earnings changes, whether analysts recognize and fully anticipate the potential inefficiency in management forecasts and whether managers’ potential forecasting inefficiency entirely results from intentional disclosure strategies or at least partly reflects managers’ unintentional information processing biases. Design/methodology/approach Archival data were used to empirically test the relation between management earnings forecast errors and past earnings changes. Findings Results show that managers underreact to past earnings changes when projecting future earnings and analysts recognize, but fail to fully anticipate, the predictable bias associated with past earnings changes in management forecasts. Moreover, analysts appear to underreact more to past earnings changes when management forecasts exhibit greater underestimation of earnings change persistence. Further analyses suggest that the underestimation of earnings change persistence is at least partly attributable to managers’ unintentional information processing bias. Originality/value This study contributes to the voluntary disclosure literature by demonstrating the limitation in the informational value of management forecasts. The findings indicate that the effectiveness of voluntary disclosure in mitigating market mispricing is inherently limited by the inefficiency in management forecasts. This study can help market participants to better use management forecasts to form more accurate earnings expectations. Moreover, our evidence suggests a managerial information processing bias with respect to past earnings changes, which may affect managers' operational, investment or financing decisions.

Parental Business Ownership and Their Children’s Miscalibration of Entrepreneurial Returns and Entry

There is increasing interest in why some individuals pursue entrepreneurship or self-employment. Yet, recent empirical work demonstrates that, on average, entrepreneurs and the self-employed earn less than paid-wage laborers, and are considerably less likely to have healthcare or a pension plan. This implies that working for oneself generally entails a total compensation discount vis-à-vis working for someone else. Two streams of research might explain this puzzle. One stream has to do with specific elements of social structure, including parental business ownership and the non-pecuniary benefits it provides progeny. A second stream concerns information processing biases that result in suboptimal choices. These two literatures have yet to engage with each other. Yet, there is good reason to believe that there are insights to be gleaned at their confluence. This follows because the children of business owners have a unique opportunity to calibrate their expectations about returns to working for oneself by observing or speaking with their parents. Representative, longitudinal data of young adults in the United States spanning 12-years are used, which include measures of parental business ownership, and a host of sociological, economic, and psychological factors implicated in prior entrepreneurial choice models. Across numerous model specifications, I find that miscalibrated earnings estimates increase the probability that young adults will become self-employed. This result is driven primarily by the right-tail of the distribution. Findings also corroborate prior research that shows that having a parent who was a business owner increases the likelihood of transitioning to self-employment. A novel finding arises when looking at the interaction of these two effects. For male respondents exhibiting particularly high levels of miscalibration, having a parent who is a business owner substantially reduces this effects. This finding suggests that the earnings miscalibration that compels some to pursue self-employment results, in part, from limited or poor information about its likely nature and/or returns.

Measuring attention to reward as an individual trait: the value-driven attention questionnaire (VDAQ).

Reward history is a powerful determinant of what we pay attention to. This influence of reward on attention varies substantially across individuals, being related to a variety of personality variables and clinical conditions. Currently, the ability to measure and quantify attention-to-reward is restricted to the use of psychophysical laboratory tasks, which limits research into the construct in a variety of ways. In the present study, we introduce a questionnaire designed to provide a brief and accessible means of assessing attention-to-reward. Scores on the questionnaire correlate with other measures known to be related to attention-to-reward and predict performance on multiple laboratory tasks measuring the construct. In demonstrating this relationship, we also provide evidence that attention-to-reward as measured in the lab, an automatic and implicit bias in information processing, is related to overt behaviors and motivations in everyday life as assessed via the questionnaire. Variation in scores on the questionnaire is additionally associated with a distinct biomarker in brain connectivity, and the questionnaire exhibits acceptable test-retest reliability. Overall, the Value-Driven Attention Questionnaire (VDAQ) provides a useful proxy-measure of attention-to-reward that is much more accessible than typical laboratory assessments.

Attentional bias toward emotional stimuli in type 2 diabetic Chinese patients with different self-management levels

ABSTRACTExtensive evidence has been obtained that supports an association between an attentional bias (AB) toward negative stimuli and vulnerability to mental and behavioral problems; however, diabetes self-management (DSM) behavior in type 2 diabetic patients has not specifically been assessed. The current study investigated whether type 2 diabetic Chinese patients who had different levels of self-management behaviors showed different patterns of AB toward either positive or negative stimuli. A sample of 195 patients completed questionnaires measuring DSM and a modified dot-probe task measuring AB. Patients with low levels of DSM had an avoidance bias for positive stimuli, the regression showed that negative orienting index significantly predicted lower DSM; patients with medium levels of DSM had difficulty in disengaging attention from negative stimuli, the regression showed that negative disengaging index significantly predicted lower DSM; while patients with high levels of DSM had an avoidance bias for negative stimuli and difficulty in disengaging from positive stimuli. An implication of this finding is that the understanding of information processing bias affects DSM and therefore suggests a novel target for prevention and treatment interventions.