Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating?
When asked to evaluate their probability of experiencing a negative life event, healthy individuals update their beliefs more following good news than bad. This is referred to as optimistic belief updating. By contrast, individuals with depression update their beliefs by a similar amount, showing re...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2022-02-01
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| Series: | Royal Society Open Science |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190814 |
| _version_ | 1798031367302283264 |
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| author | Catherine Hobbs Petra Vozarova Aarushi Sabharwal Punit Shah Katherine Button |
| author_facet | Catherine Hobbs Petra Vozarova Aarushi Sabharwal Punit Shah Katherine Button |
| author_sort | Catherine Hobbs |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | When asked to evaluate their probability of experiencing a negative life event, healthy individuals update their beliefs more following good news than bad. This is referred to as optimistic belief updating. By contrast, individuals with depression update their beliefs by a similar amount, showing reduced optimism. We conducted the first independent replication of this effect and extended this work to examine whether reduced optimistic belief updating in depression also occurs for positive life events. Replicating previous research, healthy and depression groups differed in belief updating for negative events (β = 0.71, 95% CI: 0.24, 1.18). Whereas healthy participants updated their beliefs more following good news than bad, individuals experiencing depression lacked this bias. However, our findings for positive events were inconclusive. While we did not find statistical evidence that patterns of belief updating between groups varied by valence (β = −0.51, 95% CI: −1.16, 0.15), mean update scores suggested that both groups showed largely similar updating for positive life events. Our results add confidence to previous findings that depression is characterized by negative future expectations maintained by reduced updating in response to good news. However, further research is required to understand the specificity of this to negative events, and into refining methods for quantifying belief updating in clinical and non-clinical research. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-11T19:55:20Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-dde2eac748a446ea804c097530767e4f |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2054-5703 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-11T19:55:20Z |
| publishDate | 2022-02-01 |
| publisher | The Royal Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Royal Society Open Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-dde2eac748a446ea804c097530767e4f2022-12-22T04:06:08ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032022-02-019210.1098/rsos.190814Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating?Catherine Hobbs0Petra Vozarova1Aarushi Sabharwal2Punit Shah3Katherine Button4Department of Psychology, University of Bath, 10 West, Bath BA2 7AYDepartment of Psychology, University of Bath, 10 West, Bath BA2 7AYDepartment of Psychology, University of Bath, 10 West, Bath BA2 7AYDepartment of Psychology, University of Bath, 10 West, Bath BA2 7AYDepartment of Psychology, University of Bath, 10 West, Bath BA2 7AYWhen asked to evaluate their probability of experiencing a negative life event, healthy individuals update their beliefs more following good news than bad. This is referred to as optimistic belief updating. By contrast, individuals with depression update their beliefs by a similar amount, showing reduced optimism. We conducted the first independent replication of this effect and extended this work to examine whether reduced optimistic belief updating in depression also occurs for positive life events. Replicating previous research, healthy and depression groups differed in belief updating for negative events (β = 0.71, 95% CI: 0.24, 1.18). Whereas healthy participants updated their beliefs more following good news than bad, individuals experiencing depression lacked this bias. However, our findings for positive events were inconclusive. While we did not find statistical evidence that patterns of belief updating between groups varied by valence (β = −0.51, 95% CI: −1.16, 0.15), mean update scores suggested that both groups showed largely similar updating for positive life events. Our results add confidence to previous findings that depression is characterized by negative future expectations maintained by reduced updating in response to good news. However, further research is required to understand the specificity of this to negative events, and into refining methods for quantifying belief updating in clinical and non-clinical research.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190814depressioncognitive biasesoptimismbelief updating |
| spellingShingle | Catherine Hobbs Petra Vozarova Aarushi Sabharwal Punit Shah Katherine Button Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating? Royal Society Open Science depression cognitive biases optimism belief updating |
| title | Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating? |
| title_full | Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating? |
| title_fullStr | Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating? |
| title_short | Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating? |
| title_sort | is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating |
| topic | depression cognitive biases optimism belief updating |
| url | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190814 |
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