Rose-colored Glasses Research Articles

Seeing the world through non rose-colored glasses: anxiety and the amygdala response to blended expressions.

Anxious individuals have a greater tendency to categorize faces with ambiguous emotional expressions as fearful (Richards et al., 2002). These behavioral findings might reflect anxiety-related biases in stimulus representation within the human amygdala. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together with a continuous adaptation design to investigate the representation of faces from three expression continua (surprise-fear, sadness-fear, and surprise-sadness) within the amygdala and other brain regions implicated in face processing. Fifty-four healthy adult participants completed a face expression categorization task. Nineteen of these participants also viewed the same expressions presented using type 1 index 1 sequences while fMRI data were acquired. Behavioral analyses revealed an anxiety-related categorization bias in the surprise-fear continuum alone. Here, elevated anxiety was associated with a more rapid transition from surprise to fear responses as a function of percentage fear in the face presented, leading to increased fear categorizations for faces with a mid-way blend of surprise and fear. fMRI analyses revealed that high trait anxious participants also showed greater representational similarity, as indexed by greater adaptation of the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal, between 50/50 surprise/fear expression blends and faces from the fear end of the surprise-fear continuum in both the right amygdala and right fusiform face area (FFA). No equivalent biases were observed for the other expression continua. These findings suggest that anxiety-related biases in the processing of expressions intermediate between surprise and fear may be linked to differential representation of these stimuli in the amygdala and FFA. The absence of anxiety-related biases for the sad-fear continuum might reflect intermediate expressions from the surprise-fear continuum being most ambiguous in threat-relevance.

Pre-Holiday Market Reactions to Corporate Announcements

We find that investors react more favorably to announcements of share repurchases, SEOs, acquisitions, and earnings if the announcement is made immediately prior to or on holidays. Preholiday corporate announcements are associated with more positive reactions for favorable events and less negative reactions for unfavorable events. We provide direct evidence pointing to an optimistic preholiday mood as the root cause of abnormally high reactions to preholiday corporate announcements. The results are not driven by aggregate market performance, limited attention, or a selection bias. Our findings suggest that individuals’ anticipation of holidays prompts investors to view firm-specific news through rose-colored glasses.

Exaggerated Positivity in Self‐Evaluation: A Social Neuroscience Approach to Reconciling the Role of Self‐esteem Protection and Cognitive Bias

AbstractRecent neuroscience research provides new insight into why people tend to view themselves through rose‐colored glasses and suggests a different approach for improving self‐insight. Rose‐colored glasses (sometimes referred to as positive illusions, positivity bias, self‐serving bias, self‐enhancement, or overconfidence) are a pervasive characteristic of self‐evaluation. While it is intuitive to think about rose‐colored glasses as a self‐esteem protection tactic, research has shown that people tend to exaggerate their positive attributes even when self‐esteem is not at stake. This raises questions about the relation of the exaggerated positivity used to protect self‐esteem to the exaggerated positivity seen in other circumstances. Are people using a consistent thought pattern to overemphasize their positive attributes which generalizes across situations regardless of whether self‐esteem is at stake? Or is there something different about the way people go about overemphasizing their positive attributes when coping with a threat to self‐esteem? Recent neuroscience research supports the latter: inducing the need for self‐esteem protection changes the neural profile underlying exaggerated positivity. When self‐esteem is threatened, exaggerated positivity in self‐evaluation engages orbitofrontal cortex and a functional network of increased basal ganglia activation and decreased middle frontal gyrus activation. In contrast, exaggerated positivity arising in the absence of self‐esteem threat tends to reduce orbitofrontal cortex activation and its functional connectivity with the temporal, occipital, and frontal lobes. This discovery suggests that not all rose‐colored glasses are created equally and, therefore, curtailing them may require different interventions depending on whether self‐esteem protection is their underlying driving force.

Is There a Role for Spin Doctors in Med Ed Research?

As an optimistic person, I understand the desire on the part of others to view the world through rose-colored glasses, see the cup as half filled, and generally look on the bright side of things. The world of medical education is replete with those who honestly view events more positively than skeptically. One might even say that optimism is an essential trait for those who toil in the medical education fields today. In the public arena, spin is associated with reframing the current story into one that is favorable to the speaker with the goal of manipulating public opinion. In fact entire careers are made through functioning as a “spin doctor.” However, medical education research suffers greatly from the influence of this spin in selling the research results in order to publish. Spin blurs the distinction between what may work and what likely will not. In this article I will define spin in education research, discuss why the practice is harmful, and propose safeguards to avoid this type of manipulation in crafting and writing education research. I can be considered an expert in this area because I violated most of these precepts early in my career. My comments pertain primarily to quantitative research where these concerns are most prevalent.

Does engaging in prosocial behavior make children see the world through rose-colored glasses?

Sparse research suggests that children's social information processing has links not just with aggressive behavior but also with children's prosocial behavior (e.g., Nelson & Crick, 1999). However, the past work that has been done has not been longitudinal, so the direction of links between social information processing and prosocial behavior remains unclear. In this study, we used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2010) to examine longitudinally the links between prosocial as well as aggressive behaviors and social information processing. Children completed multiple assessments of social information processing (including attribution biases and strategy response selection) from the 3rd to 5th grades. Mothers and teachers completed measures of children's prosocial and aggressive behavior from the 3rd to 6th grades. Overall, the findings demonstrated that some of the links between social information processing and social behavior are bidirectional but that the direction of effects depends on when such links were assessed. At Grade 3, it was mostly children's social behavior that predicted social information processing. At Grades 4 and 5, however, social information processing predicted children's social behavior.

The Rose-Colored Glasses of Homeowners

Based on annual household surveys between 2003 and 2012, we show that owners have a rosy picture of their current house value and hold optimistic views on the historical and expected change in house value compared to general price trends. Optimism is both driven by loss aversion and an endowment effect as overestimation of the house value is positively related to the mortgage loan-to-value ratio and tenure of the owner-occupier. After several years of national declines in house prices, the estimates in our sample have become more realistic but the glasses of homeowners remain rose-colored. Even groups of homeowners that are arguably well-informed, e.g. homeowners with moving plans and homeowners that are in charge of household finances, overestimate the value of their house.

Rethinking Prophecy

Rethinking Prophecy

Mr. Science and Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution: science and technology in modern China

Foreword by Joseph W. Dauben Acknowledgments PART I. INTRODUCTION Chapter 1. Introduction: Reassessing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, by Darryl E. Brock and Chunjuan Nancy Wei Chapter 2. The People's Landscape: Mr. Science and the Mass Line, by Darryl E. Brock PART II. SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION Chapter 3. Science Imperiled: Intellectuals and the Cultural Revolution, by Cong Cao Chapter 4. Screening the Maoist Mr. Science: Breaking with Old Ideas and Constructing the Post-Capitalist University, by Michael A. Mikita PART III. SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES AND THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION Chapter 5. Dialectics of Numbers: Marxism, Maoism, and the Calculus of Infinitesimals, by Yibao Xu Chapter 6. Ideology and Cosmology: Maoist Discussion on Physics and the Cultural Revolution, by Yinghong Cheng Chapter 7. Space for the People: China's Aerospace Industry and the Cultural Revolution, by Stacey Solomone Chapter 8. Barefoot Doctors: The Legacy of Chairman Mao's Healthcare, by Chunjuan Nancy Wei Chapter 9. Rural Agriculture: Scientific and Technological Development during the Cultural Revolution, by Dongping Han PART IV. THE POST-MAO SPRINGTIME FOR SCIENCE Chapter 10. Missile Science, Population Science: The Origins of China's One-Child Policy, by Susan Greenhalgh Chapter 11. Worker Innovation: Did Maoist Promotion Contribute to China's Present Technological and Economic Success?, by Rudi Volti Chapter 12. On the Appropriate Use of Rose-Colored Glasses: Reflections on Science in Socialist China, by Sigrid Schmalzer Selected Bibliography Index Contributors

Through Rose-Colored Glasses

Individual-based and group-based forms of relative deprivation (IRD and GRD, respectively) are linked with individual- and group-based responses to inequality, respectively. System justification theory, however, argues that we are motivated to believe that people's outcomes are equitably determined. As such, endorsement of system-justifying beliefs should dampen people's reactions to outcomes perceived to be unequal and ultimately undermine support for political mobilization. We examined these hypotheses in a national probability sample of New Zealanders (N = 6,886). As expected, IRD predicted individual-based responses to inequality (i.e., satisfaction with one's standard of living and psychological distress) better than GRD. Conversely, GRD predicted group-based responses to inequality (i.e., perceived discrimination against one's group and support for political mobilization) better than IRD. Each of these relationships was, however, notably weaker among participants who were high, relative to low, on system justification. These results demonstrate that system-justifying beliefs have a palliative effect on people's experiences with inequality.

Seeing others through rose-colored glasses: An affiliation goal and positivity bias in implicit trait impressions

People infer traits from other people's behaviors without intention, awareness, or effort, and this spontaneous trait inference (STI) effect has been shown to be robust. The purpose of the present research was to demonstrate the flexibility of STIs despite the ubiquity. Specifically, we examined the effect of an affiliation goal on STI formation and found a positivity bias. In Experiment 1, perceivers with an affiliation goal formed more positive (versus negative) spontaneous trait inferences compared to those without this goal and those who had been primed with semantically positive, affiliation-unrelated words. Experiment 2 provided evidence that this effect was driven by a motivational state by showing that the positivity bias occurs only when a perceiver's goal to affiliate remains unfulfilled. The goal's interaction with trait valence showed focused, goal-relevant bias. These studies are the first to show that STIs form flexibly in response to perceivers' primed social goals supporting the functionality account of STIs in implicit impression formation.

The joyful, yet balanced, amygdala: moderated responses to positive but not negative stimuli in trait happiness

Although much is known about the neural dynamics of maladaptive affective styles, the mechanisms of happiness and well-being are less clear. One possibility is that the neural processes of trait happiness are the opposite of those involved in depression/anxiety: 'rose-colored glasses' cause happy people to focus on positive cues while remaining oblivious to threats. Specifically, because negative affective styles have been associated with increased amygdala activation to negative stimuli, it may be happy people will not show this enhanced response, and may even show reduced amygdala activation to negative stimuli. Alternatively, if well-being entails appropriate sensitivity to information, happy people may process any relevant cues-positive or negative-to facilitate appropriate responding. This would mean that happiness is associated with increased amygdala activation to both positive and negative stimuli. Forty-two participants viewed affective stimuli during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Happier participants showed greater amygdala responses to positive stimuli. Moreover, no significant relationships were found between happiness and responses to negative stimuli. In other words, for happy people, a tuning toward positive did not come at the cost of losing sensitivity to negativity. This work suggests that trait happiness is associated with a balanced amygdala response to positivity and negativity.

Rose-colored glasses gone too far? Mania symptoms predict biased emotion experience and perception in couples

The present study investigated how symptoms of mania—associated with heightened and persistent positive emotion—influence emotion experience and perception during distressing social interactions, whereby the experience of heightened positive emotion may not be socially adaptive. Specifically, mania symptoms were assessed via a validated self-report measure, and used to predict emotion experience and perception during a naturalistic conversation between romantic couples about a time of distress and suffering (N = 68 dyads). Results indicated that mania symptoms were associated with increased positive and decreased negative emotion experience and perception between couples, as well as decreased empathic accuracy for partners’ negative but not positive emotions. These findings suggest that mania symptoms may be associated with “rose-colored” glasses characterized by a positively biased emotional experience and outward perception even during perhaps the most intimate and distressing social situations.

The Brier Plans a Mountain Vision Center

The Brier Plans a Mountain Vision Center Jim Wayne Miller (bio) When an optometrist announced the opening of a practice in the county seat, the Brier considered opening his own Mountain Vision Center. He knew there was a need, knew the many problems of his neighbors: Love was blind. Justice sat winking at cousins in the jury box. Men undressed mountains with their eyes. Dollars signs caught the eyes of children—and held on. Some were so far-sighted they couldn’t see now for later. Others couldn’t see later on for now. And still none saw further than ridge-to-ridge. Some suspected the ocean was a tall-tale. A girl who actually saw the ocean on vacation came home disappointed. Nobody saw any way out. Anyone who took a backward glance was apt to step out in front of a coal truck. People saw smokestacks in their neighbors’ eyes but not the stripmines in their own. So many folks saw double: one eye squinted so they could like themselves; the other wandered, looking about to see if other people liked them. Some had no eyes at all, saw everything with someone else’s. They saw through everything and into nothing. Out looking for the woods, they walked into trees, over highwalls. [End Page 151] The Brier pictured himself in his Mountain Vision Center, standing in a white lab coat, like in an ad for aspirin, pointing to the writing on the wall. He wouldn’t post bare facts, the naked truth. Blind in the blizzard of their senses, dazzled by the light of now, people would only look away, shading their eyes with a hand. Anyway, facts were like a woman: never so naked as when seen beneath a revealing dress. The trouble was, the things folks saw every day, and things they said themselves, they never saw or heard at all. But what they saw or heard without surprise would astonish them if they read it. He’d show them familiar facts—but caught up in a vision that made things strange and new, that way of looking that made a cloud against blue sky a whale on the ocean. They liked play-acting, tricks and sleight- of-hand. If he could work with a needle convincingly enough, they’d see the thread that wasn’t there. Instead of charts with letters large and small, he’d put up newspapers, poems and stories. He’d post the news—beside the news that stayed news. Have them read it off to him, as they might cards with rows of numbers. He’d have them add up poems and stories, and legal notices of intention to mine, like columns of figures, and so count all the sums they were. He’d recommend exchanging rose-colored glasses for poems that made gentle contact with the mind’s eye, like a soft lens, lining up then with now, now with then, news with news that stays news, like front and rear gun sights. He’d have them step though the door of a poem or story, as if into a dark projection room. Like children running back and forth in front of [End Page 152] a beam of light, they’d see leaping shadows of themselves, their own dark shapes on a screen. If they became visible to themselves, the things they saw and said every day, without surprise, would astound them. Someone’s eyes would narrow with suspicion that something very different from what seemed to be happening was actually going on. Something . . . a shape that had no name. Then someone would name the shape. Then everyone could see it who could say it. They’d see the hand that was supposed to guide everyone’s self-interest, invisibly, was tipping over mountains, scooping up land, and reaching into their pockets. They’d see they dangled from strings held by that hand; see that it had a face and corporate body, and sat in a boardroom tapping its foot to the jig they danced. They’d see they were moving along at sixty minutes an hour on a mountain road, into a future that was a mirror with no...

Seeing the World through Rose Colored Glasses: The Etiology of Eosinophilic Infiltration of the Upper GI Tract in a Patient with Ulcerative Colitis

Introduction: Eosinophilic disease of the upper GI tract is an uncommon disease. The differential diagnosis is often broad and includes parasitic infection, eosinophilic gastroenteritis, and Crohn's. We report a patient with a history of “ulcerative colitis” found to have eosinophils in the stomach and duodenum upon performance of an upper endoscopy. Methods (Case Report): A 36-year-old female with a history of ulcerative colitis and no prior travel history presented with persistent nausea. The patient had a bout of bloody diarrhea two months previously, at which time a colonoscopy revealed procto-sigmoiditis, with a normal right colon and terminal ileum. The patient underwent mesalamine therapy and saw remission. Laboratory evaluation, which included a CBC, CMP, ESR, CRP, TSH, and Β-HCG were all within normal limits. Treatment with a proton pump inhibitor and ondansetron yielded no significant improvement. Upper endoscopy was performed. Although only mild gastritis was found, biopsies of the stomach and duodenum showed greater than thirty eosinophils per high powered field. A capsule endoscopy was performed. More than five deep ulcerations were seen in the termindal ileum consistent with a diagnosis of Crohn's disease. ASCA antibodies and pANCA antibodies were negative. The patient was treated with oral budesonide with resolution of symptoms. Discussion: Eosinophili of the upper GI tract is a relatively uncommon disease. Although Crohn's disease of the upper GI tract typically presents with severe ulceration and granulomas, eosinophilic infiltration has been reported. Eosinophils in the upper GI tract have not been demonstrated with ulcerative colitis. There is one case report of a patient with simultaneous ulcerative colitis and eosinophilic gastroenteritis. Although it would seem reasonable, it is much more common to see Crohn's in patients with upper GI tract eosinophilia compared to ulcerative colitis. The capsule endoscopy can be a useful tool to confirm the diagnosis of and rule out an “overlap syndrome.”Figure: No Caption available.

Leading Change on Campus: How to Move the Elephant

Leading Change on Campus: How to Move the Elephant

NGOs and Development Reconsidered

Abstract The remarkable rise in the number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide during the 1980s and 1990s has led to the need for a sober reassessment of their role in development. By the late 1990s, the NGOs’ earlier celebration as the “magic bullet” for achieving development objectives was replaced by a number of questions concerning their legitimacy, accountability and transparency, and ultimately their ability to effectively reduce poverty in developing countries. The present paper readdresses this set of questions and attempts to provide some answers based on studies conducted over the past ten years. In this context, we found that marginal improvements in the NGO impact at the country program level can be recorded. Other issues, however, remain unresolved. Finally, we offer a number of suggestions enabling these institutions to act more effectively as contributors to development. Overall, our findings suggest the need to take off our rose-colored glasses and adopt a more realistic view.

Death Comes to the Broadway Musical

The Broadway musical is an excellent prism for viewing the narrative of American life – as it is, has been, and perhaps should be. In the first part of the twentieth century, musicals viewed life through rose-colored glasses; musicals were equivalent to musical comedy. Starting in the 1940s, the mood of musicals darkened. One indication of the new, serious tone was that characters in musicals died in the course of the show. This essay examines several questions relating to death in the Broadway musical, such as who dies, when in the course of the drama the death occurs, and how the death is marked musically. It concludes with a look at musicals involving the deaths of historical characters and at AIDS-related musicals, works whose assumptions and ideals are very far from those of the musical comedies of the early twentieth century.

The brain's rose-colored glasses

People tend to remain overly optimistic even when faced with information about a gloomy future. A study now shows that people are selectively worse at incorporating information about a worse-than-expected future. It also describes the learning signals in the brain that correlate with this bias.

Measuring and modeling roots, the rhizosphere, and microbial processes belowground

Measuring and modeling roots, the rhizosphere, and microbial processes belowground

The Offensive Internet: privacy, speech, and reputation

The Internet has been romanticized as a zone of freedom. The alluring combination of sophisticated technology with low barriers to entry and instantaneous outreach to millions of users has mesmerized libertarians and communitarians alike. Lawmakers have joined the celebration, passing the Communications Decency Act, which enables Internet Service Providers to allow unregulated discourse without danger of liability, all in the name of enhancing freedom of speech. But an unregulated Internet is a breeding ground for offensive conduct. At last we have a book that begins to focus on abuses made possible by anonymity, freedom from liability, and lack of oversight. The distinguished scholars assembled in this volume, drawn from law and philosophy, connect the absence of legal oversight with harassment and discrimination. Questioning the simplistic notion that abusive speech and mobocracy are the inevitable outcomes of new technology, they argue that current misuse is the outgrowth of social, technological, and legal choices. Seeing this clearly will help us to be better informed about our options. In a field still dominated by a frontier perspective, this book has the potential to be a real game changer. Armed with example after example of harassment in Internet chat rooms and forums, the authors detail some of the vile and hateful speech that the current combination of law and technology has bred. The facts are then treated to analysis and policy prescriptions. Read this book and you will never again see the Internet through rose-colored glasses.