Processing Of Positive Information Research Articles

Age Differences in the Tradeoff between Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control in Emotional Information Processing.

Greater well-being in older adults stems from more effective emotion regulation strategies, highlighting the role of cognitive control. However, cognitive control involves different subsystems, and it is still unclear whether different subsystems have different effects on different emotional information processing. The Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) theory postulates that cognitive control can operate in two distinct modes, namely proactive control (a “proactive” preparatory mode) and reactive control (a “reactive” wait-and-see mode). This study created an emotional AX-CPT task to explore differences in cognitive control tradeoff between youth and older adults when processing emotional information. The results found that youth had significantly higher error rates on the emotional-neutral sequence than older adults regardless of the valence of emotional information; only in the negative condition did older adults have higher error rates on both the sad-sad and neutral-sad sequences than youth; this phenomenon was not found in the positive condition. The study showed that, in emotional information processing, youth preferred proactive control over older adults; in negative information processing, older adults preferred reactive control strategies over youth; in positive information processing, older adults showed a similar cognitive control pattern to youth, and proactive control was enhanced.

Children's evaluation of Everyday Social Encounters Questionnaire: Short form validation.

This study validated a short form of the Children's Evaluation of Everyday Social Encounters Questionnaire (ChEESE-Q). Fifth- to eighth-grade children (N = 241) completed a two-vignette version of the ChEESE-Q (i.e., ChEESE-Q SF), along with measures of adjustment and affect. The ChEESE-Q SF fit the same three-factor structure as the original ChEESE-Q, with each factor-based subscale being invariant across grade and gender. Results also indicated that the ChEESE-Q could not only be shortened at the vignette level, but at the item level as well, maintaining excellent model fit with the same three factor structure. ChEESE-Q SF subscale scores demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and correlated with related constructs in expected directions. Negative information processing was associated with higher anxious and depressive symptomology and negative affect. Positive information processing was associated with lower depressive symptomology, and higher positive affect. Analysis of a secondary sample of third- to sixth-grade youth (N = 252) also demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability. This study provided validation for a shortened version of the ChEESE-Q, and more support for specific styles of information processing. Validation of a short form enables researchers to assess social information processing in a multifaceted and comprehensive, yet resource-efficient way. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychological Predictors of COVID-19 Prevention Behavior in Hungarian Women Across Different Generations.

BackgroundAge related differences were found in prevention behavior, showing that older individuals tend to be the most proactive. The aim of the study was the identification of psychological predictors on COVID-19 prevention behavior in women, across four generations. In addition, the predictive role of the psychological variables was explored through the lens of negative and positive information processing perspective on total and domain-specific COVID-19 prevention behavior.MethodsA cross-sectional research was conducted. The sample included 834 Hungarian speaking women. The assessed variables were: COVID-19 knowledge, risk perception, COVID-19 health anxiety, negative automatic thoughts, psychological flexibility, and four domains of COVID-19 prevention behavior (social distancing, general hygiene, information seeking, health behavior). A three-level hierarchical linear regression analysis was conducted to investigate the predictors of preventive behavior in each generation.ResultsA diversity across generations was found. In case of baby boomer generation, the final model explained 32.4% of the variance for total prevention behavior [F(14,215) = 8.847, p < 0.001], and only perceived risk made a significant contribution. For Gen X the final model accounted for 21.1% of variance of total prevention behavior [F(14,341) = 7.788, p < 0.001], marital status, perceived risk, COVID-19 health anxiety, and negative automatic thoughts made significant contributions. In case of Gen Y the final model accounted for 6.2% of variance on total prevention behavior [F(14,147) = 1.761, p = 0.05], only perceived risk had a contribution to the final model. For Gen Z the final model accounted for 23.4% of variance on total preventive behavior [F(13,71) = 2.979, p = 0.002], and only psychological flexibility made a contribution to the model. The results on the distinct domains of COVID-19 prevention behavior emphasized details in the dissimilarity among generations.ConclusionThe role of generational identity on COVID-19 prevention behavior is relevant. The coexistence of negative and positive information processing may have its beneficial role in certain areas of prevention.

Эксплицитная и имплицитная обработка негативных и нейтральных экспрессий лица при депрессии

The effect of negative bias in information processing in persons with depression is widely discussed in the literature. This perception bias is viewed as a possible mechanisms of the overall emotional decrease in patients with depression. However, most studies in this area were conducted using explicit processing of emotionogenic information. The results were ambiguous and sometimes showed the effects of positive bias in healthy respondents. In this study, an experimental design with both explicit and implicit processing of emotional stimuli was implemented. The face images of negative and neutral valence were shown in groups of healthy respondents and patients with depression. Among 106 participants there were 57 patients with moderate depression. The participants were presented with images of faces with neutral or angry expressions (Lundqvist et al., 1998) and instructed to count their number based on emotional valence in the explicit condition, or gender in the implicit condition (De Lyssnyder et al., 2012). A comparison of processing time by group, valence and task, showed complementary effects in tasks with explicit process- ing. The patients with depression took longer to process negative stimuli, and the healthy participants spent more time processing neutral stimuli. In the implicit processing condition, the healthy respondents did not display any significant differences in processing times for negative and neutral images, while the patients were still fixating on negative images. However, after statistically controlling the age-related effects, these differences were reduced to a strong fixation on neutral faces during explicit processing in the non-depressed group. The results suggest a possible preventative mechanism — preferential processing of positive information — providing protection from depressive symptoms. This view offers an alternative explanation to possible causes of depression onset in contrast with a pathogenic mechanism of fixation on negative information in patients with depression.

How Depressive Symptoms Hinder Positive Information Processing: An Experimental Study on the Interplay of Cognitive Immunisation and Negative Mood in the Context of Expectation Adjustment

BackgroundPeople with depression maintain negative expectations despite disconfirming positive experiences by reappraising or discarding novel positive information, referred to as “cognitive immunisation”. A second body of literature suggests that negative mood can negatively affect information processing. Bridging these two lines of research, the present study examined the interplay of cognitive immunisation and negative mood in the context of expectation modification.MethodsIn a student sample (N = 152), we used a well-established experimental paradigm to examine the adjustment of performance expectations in response to positive performance feedback, and its relation to depressive symptoms. In a 2 × 2 design, participants received either a negative mood induction, a cognitive immunisation manipulation, both, or no further manipulation.ResultsParticipants from all experimental groups revised their previous expectations significantly in line with positive performance feedback. However, depressive symptoms were a negative predictor of expectation adjustment, and a moderation analysis indicated that this effect was particularly pronounced if participants underwent the negative mood induction.ConclusionsConsistent with previous work, depressive symptoms were associated with a reduced ability to integrate positive information. Furthermore, our results suggest that the activation of negative mood in people with elevated levels of depression may hamper learning from new positive experience.

Effect of acute citalopram on self-referential emotional processing and social cognition in healthy volunteers.

Depression is characterised by negative views of the self. Antidepressant treatment may remediate negative self-schema through increasing processing of positive information about the self. Changes in affective processing during social interactions may increase expression of prosocial behaviours, improving interpersonal communications. To examine whether acute administration of citalopram is associated with an increase in positive affective learning biases about the self and prosocial behaviour. Healthy volunteers (n = 41) were randomised to either an acute 20 mg dose of citalopram or matched placebo in a between-subjects double-blind design. Participants completed computer-based cognitive tasks designed to measure referential affective processing, social cognition and expression of prosocial behaviours. Participants administered citalopram made more cooperative choices than those administered placebo in a prisoner's dilemma task (β = 20%, 95% CI: 2%, 37%). Exploratory analyses indicated that participants administered citalopram showed a positive bias when learning social evaluations about a friend (β = 4.06, 95% CI: 0.88, 7.24), but not about the self or a stranger. Similarly, exploratory analyses found evidence of increased recall of positive words and reduced recall of negative words about others (β = 2.41, 95% CI: 0.89, 3.93), but not the self, in the citalopram group. Participants administered citalopram showed greater prosocial behaviours, increased positive recall and increased positive learning of social evaluations towards others. The increase in positive affective bias and prosocial behaviours towards others may, at least partially, be a mechanism of antidepressant effect. However, we found no evidence that citalopram influenced self-referential processing.

Neurocognitive predictors of self-reported reward responsivity and approach motivation in depression: A data-driven approach.

Individual differences in reward-related processes, such as reward responsivity and approach motivation, appear to play a role in the nature and course of depression. Prior work suggests that cognitive biases for valenced information may contribute to these reward processes. Yet there is little work examining how biased attention, processing, and memory for positively and negatively valenced information may be associated with reward-related processes in samples with depression symptoms. We used a data-driven, machine learning (elastic net) approach to identify the best predictors of self-reported reward-related processes using multiple tasks of attention, processing, and memory for valenced information measured across behavioral, eye tracking, psychophysiological, and computational modeling approaches (n = 202). Participants were adults (ages 18-35) who ranged in depression symptom severity from mild to severe. Models predicted between 5.0-12.2% and 9.7-28.0% of held-out test sample variance in approach motivation and reward responsivity, respectively. Low self-referential processing of positively valenced information was the most robust, albeit modest, predictor of low approach motivation and reward responsivity. Self-referential processing of positive information is the strongest predictor of reward responsivity and approach motivation in a sample ranging from mild to severe depression symptom severity. Experiments are now needed to clarify the causal relationship between self-referential processing of positively valenced information and reward processes in depression.

The relationship between the positivity effect and facial-cue based trustworthiness evaluations in older adults

This study investigates if there is an age-related positivity effect on how older adults in eastern cultures perform trustworthiness evaluations based on facial cues. Furthermore, it explores the potential method information processing affected by the positivity effect during trustworthiness evaluations. The results show that the level of trustworthiness older adults in China assign to faces is significantly higher than that of younger adults; older adults’ trustworthiness evaluations based on facial cues in the valid cueing condition is significantly higher than in the invalid cueing condition; and for younger adults, trustworthiness evaluation of untrustworthy faces in the valid cueing condition was significantly lower than in the invalid cueing condition. Overall, these results show that positive information processing in older adults is regulated by attention capacity, while negative information processing by young adults is regulated by attention capacity, which indicates that the age-related positivity effect in older adults is due to increased positive information processing.

An fMRI study of loneliness in younger and older adults

ABSTRACTLoneliness, the subjective experience of social isolation, may reflect, in part, underlying neural processing of social signals. Aging may exacerbate loneliness due to decreased social networks and increased social isolation, or it may reduce loneliness due to preferential attentional processing of positive information and increased interactions with emotionally close partners. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of loneliness in younger (N = 50, 26 female, Mage = 20.4) and older (N = 49, 30 female, Mage = 62.9) adults. Compared to younger adults, older adults were less lonely and dwelled longer on faces, regardless of valence. Previous studies in younger adults found that loneliness was negatively correlated with ventral striatal (VS) activation to pleasant social pictures of strangers yet positively correlated with VS activation to faces of close others. In the present study, we observed no association between loneliness and VS activation to social pictures of strangers in either age group. Further, unlike previous studies, we observed no association between social network size and amygdala activation to social stimuli. Additional research is needed to examine the effect of loneliness and social network size on neural processing of different dimensions of social stimuli.

Is There a Paradox of Aging: When the Negative Aging Stereotype Meets the Positivity Effect in Older Adults

Background/Study Context: Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) states that the positivity effect is a result of older adults’ emotion regulation and that older adults derive more emotional satisfaction from prioritizing positive information processing. The authors explored whether the positivity effect appeared when the negative aging stereotype was activated in older adults and also whether the effect differed between mixed and unmixed valence conditions.Methods: Sixty younger (18–23 years of age) and 60 older (60–87 years of age) adults were randomly assigned to a control group and a priming group, in which the negative aging stereotype was activated. All the participants were asked to select 15 words that best described the elderly from a mixed-word list (positive and negative words were mixed together) and from an unmixed-word list (positive and negative words were separated).Results: Older adults in the control group selected more positive words, whereas among younger adults, selection did not differ by valence in either the mixed- or unmixed-word list conditions. There were no differences between the positive and negative word choices of the younger and older adults in the priming group. We calculated the differences between the numbers of positive and negative words, and the differences in the older adults’ word choices were larger than those among the younger adults; the differences were also larger in the control group than in the priming group.Conclusion: The positivity effect worked by choosing positive stimuli rather than avoiding negative stimuli. The role of emotion regulation in older adults was limited, and when the positivity effect faced the effect of the negative aging stereotype, the negative stereotype effect was dominant. Future research should explore the changes in the positivity effect in the face of a positive aging stereotype and what roles other factors (e.g., activation level of the stereotype, arousal level of affective words) might play.

A Positive Perspective on Attentional Bias: Positive Affectivity and Attentional Bias to Positive Information

In recent years there has been growing interest in determining the attentional basis of positive affectivity. Investigators have sought to evaluate the hypothesis that elevated positive affectivity is characterized by an attentional bias that favours the processing of positive information over neutral information. Unfortunately, in the studies carried out to date, the assessment procedures used by researchers to assess such attentional selectivity have either been methodologically limited or methodologically flawed. Hence, the validity of the hypothesis has remained indeterminate. To overcome the problems associated with attentional assessment procedures used in previous studies, and so shed light on the attentional basis of positive affectivity, we employed an appropriate variant of the attentional probe task. Our findings show that participants high in positive affectivity displayed greater relative attention to positive information compared to neutral information, than was the case for their low positive affectivity counterparts. Thus, the present results support the hypothesis that an attentional bias to positive information, relative to neutral information, is characteristic of elevated positive affectivity.

Emotional bias of sleep-dependent processing shifts from negative to positive with aging

Age-related memory decline has been proposed to result partially from impairments in memory consolidation over sleep. However, such decline may reflect a shift toward selective processing of positive information with age rather than impaired sleep-related mechanisms. In the present study, young and older adults viewed negative and neutral pictures or positive and neutral pictures and underwent a recognition test after sleep or wake. Subjective emotional reactivity and affect were also measured. Compared with waking, sleep preserved valence ratings and memory for positive but not negative pictures in older adults and negative but not positive pictures in young adults. In older adults, memory for positive pictures was associated with slow wave sleep. Furthermore, slow wave sleep predicted positive affect in older adults but was inversely related to positive affect in young adults. These relationships were strongest for older adults with high memory for positive pictures and young adults with high memory for negative pictures. Collectively, these results indicate preserved but selective sleep-dependent memory processing with healthy aging that may be biased to enhance emotional well-being.

Global self-esteem and the processing of positive information about the self

We examined undergraduate participants' (N=98) self-related cognitive response to positive information about the self and how this response is related to global self-esteem and trait anxiety. Positive information about the self was defined as information that attributes positive qualities to the self or positive experiences for the self. The responses were measured by an open-ended questionnaire containing 12 scenarios. Self-esteem correlated positively with positive self-verification and self-focused positive construal of the event, and negatively with negative self-verification and self-focused negative construal of the event. All the four forms of self-focused cognitive responses made unique contributions to the prediction of self-esteem.Mediational analysis suggested that self-focused negative construal of positive information about the self might partially account for the link between self-esteem and trait anxiety. The findings in this study underscore the importance of studying cognitive responses to positive events for understanding individual differences in self-esteem and trait anxiety.

Internet Searching About Disease Elicits a Positive Perception of Own Health When Severity of Illness Is High: A Longitudinal Questionnaire Study.

BackgroundThe Internet is one of the primary sources for health information. However, in research, the effects of Internet use on the perception of one’s own health have not received much attention so far.ObjectiveThis study tested how Internet use for acquiring health information and severity of illness influence patients with a chronic disease with regard to the perception of their own health. Negative psychological states are known to lead to preferential processing of positive information. In particular, the self-directed nature of Internet use provides room for such biases. Therefore, we predicted that patients experiencing negative health states more frequently, due to more frequent episodes of a chronic illness, will gain a more positive perception of their health if they use the Internet frequently to gain health information, but not if they use the Internet rarely. This effect was not expected for other sources of information.MethodsA longitudinal questionnaire study with two measurement points—with a 7-month time lag—tested the hypothesis in a sample of patients with chronic inflammatory bowel disease (n=208). This study assessed patients’ frequency of Internet use, their participation in online social support groups, their use of other sources of health information, and several indicators of the participants’ perceptions of their own health. A structure equation model (SEM) was used to test the predictions separately for Internet searches and other sources of information.ResultsData analysis supported the prediction; the interaction between frequency of health-related information searches and frequency of episodes at the first measurement point (T1) was related to participants’ positive perceptions of their own health at the second measurement point (T2) (B=.10, SE=.04, P=.02) above and beyond the perceptions of their own health at T1. When participants used the Internet relatively rarely (-1 SD), there was no relationship between frequency of episodes and positive perceptions of their own health (B=-.11, SE=.14, t 203=-0.82, P=.41). In contrast, when participants used the Internet relatively often (+1 SD), the more frequently they had those episodes the more positive were the perceptions of their own health (B=.36, SE=.15, t 203=2.43, P=.02). Additional SEM analyses revealed that this effect occurs exclusively when information is searched for on the Internet, but not when other sources of information are consulted, nor when online social support groups are joined.ConclusionsThe results of this study suggest that patients might process information from the Internet selectively, in an unbalanced, biased fashion, with the formation of a self-serving (ie, positive) perception of own health. At the same time, this bias contributes to the ability of patients to cope psychologically with their disease.

Reward devaluation: Dot-probe meta-analytic evidence of avoidance of positive information in depressed persons.

Cognitive theories of depression and anxiety have traditionally emphasized the role of attentional biases in the processing of negative information. The dot-probe task has been widely used to study this phenomenon. Recent findings suggest that biased processing of positive information might also be an important aspect of developing psychopathological symptoms. However, despite some evidence suggesting persons with symptoms of depression and anxiety may avoid positive information, many dot-probe studies have produced null findings. The present review used conventional and novel meta-analytic methods to evaluate dot-probe attentional biases away from positive information and, for comparison, toward negative information, in depressed and anxious individuals. Results indicated that avoidance of positive information is a real effect exhibiting substantial evidential value among persons experiencing psychopathology, with individuals evidencing primary symptoms of depression clearly demonstrating this effect. Different theoretical explanations for these findings are evaluated, including those positing threat-processing structures, even-handedness, self-regulation, and reward devaluation, with the novel theory of reward devaluation emphasized and expanded. These novel findings and theory suggest that avoidance of prospective reward helps to explain the cause and sustainability of depressed states. Suggestions for future research and methodological advances are discussed.

Self-focused attention affects subsequent processing of positive (but not negative) performance appraisals

Background and objectivesCognitive-behavioral models highlight the conjoint roles of self-focused attention (SFA), post-event processing (PEP), and performance appraisals in the maintenance of social anxiety. SFA, PEP, and biased performance appraisals are related to social anxiety; however, limited research has examined how SFA affects information-processing following social events. The current study examined whether SFA affects the relationships between performance appraisals and PEP following a social event.. Methods137 participants with high (n = 72) or low (n = 65) social anxiety were randomly assigned to conditions of high SFA or low SFA while engaging in a standardized social performance. Subsequent performance appraisals and PEP were measured. ResultsImmediate performance appraisals were not affected by SFA. High levels of SFA led to a stronger, inverse relationship between immediate positive performance appraisals and subsequent negative PEP. High levels of SFA also led to a stronger, inverse relationship between negative PEP and changes in positive performance appraisals.. LimitationsFuture research should examine whether the current findings, which involved a standardized social performance event, extend to interaction events as well as in a clinical sample. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that SFA affects the processing of positive information following a social performance event. SFA is particularly important for understanding how negative PEP undermines positive performance appraisals..

Counter-regulation online: Threat biases retrieval of information during Internet search

The Internet is one of the main information sources. It is frequently used to gather information in self-relevant domains, such as health. Self-relevant information is likely to be accompanied by certain affective and motivational states. For instance, individuals may be afraid to be seriously ill and, thus, feel threatened. Threat is known to elicit preferential processing of positive information. Therefore, we predicted that under threat more positive search terms are retrieved from memory and more positive information is retrieved from already encoded online information than in a control condition. Two experiments supported this prediction. Thus, information processing during Internet search is positively biased under threat. This positive bias can satisfy coping needs, but can at the same time have a negative impact on subsequent behavior and decisions.

Counter-regulating on the Internet: Threat elicits preferential processing of positive information.

The Internet is a central source of information. It is increasingly used for information search in self-relevant domains (e.g., health). Self-relevant topics are also associated with specific emotions and motivational states. For example, individuals may fear serious illness and feel threatened. Thus far, the impact of threat has received little attention in Internet-based research. The current studies investigated how threat influences Internet search. Threat is known to elicit the preferential processing of positive information. The self-directed nature of Internet search should particularly provide opportunities for such processing behavior. We predicted that during Internet search, more positive information would be processed (i.e., allocated more attention to) and more positive knowledge would be acquired under threat than in a control condition. Three experiments supported this prediction: Under threat, attention is directed more to positive web pages (Study 1) and positive links (Study 2), and more positive information is acquired (Studies 1 and 3) than in a control condition. Notably, the effect on knowledge acquisition was mediated by the effect on attention allocation during an actual Internet search (Study 1). Thus, Internet search under threat leads to selective processing of positive information and dampens threatened individuals' negative affect.

The positivity effect and auditory recognition memory for musical excerpts in young, middle-aged, and older adults.

The term was coined to describe older adults' preferential processing of positive information over negative information in visual memory recognition studies (Reed & Carstensen, 2012). The socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1995) postulates that, as a result of changes in motivation toward future goals, emotional priorities change over the life span. Young adults and those who perceive no limitation of time are motivated to expand their horizons in terms of acquiring information and broadening their number of social contacts. Older adults and those who perceive limitations in their time remaining are motivated to focus on the present and narrow their social contacts to meaningful relationships with family and close friends (Carstensen, 2006). The shift in goals contributes to differences in how information is processed. Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that because of this shift over time, older adults will prefer processing positive information rather than negative information in contrast to the preferences of younger adults (Reed, Chan, & Mikels, 2014).The positivity effect has been widely demonstrated in memory recognition studies using visual stimuli (Charles, Mather, & Carstensen, 2003; Mather & Carstensen, 2003; Mickley, Steinmetz, Muscatell, & Kensinger, 2010; Mikels, Larken, ReuterLorenz, & Carstensen, 2005; Spaniol, Voss & Grady, 2008). The positivity effect in terms of emotion perception by older adults has also been found in studies using auditory stimuli, specifically music. Laukka and Juslin (2007) examined age-related differences in emotion recognition as expressed in speech and music. Older adults were less accurate in their recognition of negative emotion expression than positive for speech and music stimuli. Lima and Castro (2011) further examined age-related changes in emotion recognition expressed by music. Participants ranging in age from 17- 84 years were asked to listen to musical excerpts portraying happiness, sadness, scariness, and peacefulness. They were then asked to rank how much each excerpt represented each emotional quality. An age-related difference was noted, with older adults not as responsive to sad and scary music as young adults. No agerelated difference was noted for happy and peaceful music. Vieillard, Didierjean, and Maquestiaux (2012) examined age-related differences in determining complexity in the perception of valence and arousal while listening to excerpts of film music. Older adults did not rate peaceful and threatening excerpts as significantly different. The older adults may not have found the threatening music to be stimulating and may have paid less attention to negatively arousing stimuli as a way of controlling their emotional responses to the music (Vieillard et al., 2012). In sum, the results of studies using visual as well as auditory stimuli provide support for the positivity effect because older adults were more responsive to stimuli representing positive emotions than they were to stimuli representing negative emotions. The goal of the present study was to examine the presence of the positivity effect in recognition memory for music.There were three objectives for the current study. The first objective was to investigate age-related differences in the interaction between emotion and cognition based on recognition of emotionally valenced musical stimuli. The precise goal of the study was to examine if the positivity effect based on the socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1992) would be generalized to recognition memory in an auditory domain, specifically music. Young, middle-aged, and older adults listened to carefully chosen musical excerpts for later recognition memory, in addition to completing cognitive tests and measures of affect. We hypothesized that if older adults in the sample demonstrated the positivity effect for recognition memory of musical excerpts, they would recognize proportionally more of the pleasant excerpts than they would the unpleasant. …

Impact of acute administration of escitalopram on the processing of emotional and neutral images: a randomized crossover fMRI study of healthy women.

Acute neural effects of antidepressant medication on emotion processing biases may provide the foundation on which clinical outcomes are based. Along with effects on positive and negative stimuli, acute effects on neutral stimuli may also relate to antidepressant efficacy, yet these effects are still to be investigated. The present study therefore examined the impact of a single dose of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor escitalopram (20 mg) on positive, negative and neutral stimuli using pharmaco-fMRI. Within a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover design, healthy women completed 2 sessions of treatment administration and fMRI scanning separated by a 1-week washout period. We enrolled 36 women in our study. When participants were administered escitalopram relative to placebo, left amygdala activity was increased and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) activity was decreased during presentation of positive pictures (potentiation of positive emotion processing). In contrast, escitalopram was associated with decreased left amygdala and increased right IFG activity during presentation of negative pictures (attenuation of negative emotion processing). In addition, escitalopram decreased right IFG activity during the processing of neutral stimuli, akin to the effects on positive stimuli (decrease in negative appraisal). Although we used a women-only sample to reduce heterogeneity, our results may not generalize to men. Potential unblinding, which was related to the subjective occurrence of side effects, occurred in the study; however, manipulation check analyses demonstrated that results were not impacted. These novel findings demonstrate that a single dose of the commonly prescribed escitalopram facilitates a positive information processing bias. These findings provide an important lead for better understanding effects of antidepressant medication.