During everyday interactions people constantly receive feedback on their behavior, which shapes their beliefs about themselves. While classic studies in the field of social learning suggest that people have a tendency to learn better from good news (positivity bias) when they perceive little opportunities to immediately improve their own performance, we show updating is biased towards negative information when participants perceive the opportunity to adapt their performance during learning. In three consecutive experiments we applied a computational modeling approach on the subjects’ learning behavior and reveal the negativity bias was specific for learning about own compared to others’ performances and was modulated by prior beliefs about the self, i.e. stronger negativity bias in individuals lower in self-esteem. Social anxiety affected self-related negativity biases only when individuals were exposed to a judging audience thereby potentially explaining the persistence of negative self-images in socially anxious individuals which commonly surfaces in social settings. Self-related belief formation is therefore surprisingly negatively biased in situations suggesting opportunities to improve and this bias is shaped by trait differences in self-esteem and social anxiety.

Experiencing events as controllable is essential for human well-being. Based on classic psychological theory, we test how internal control beliefs impact the affective valuation of task outcomes, neural dynamics and ensuing behavioral preferences. In three consecutive studies we show that dynamics in positive affect increase, with a qualitative shift towards self-evaluative pride, when agents believe they caused a given outcome. We demonstrate that these outcomes engage brain networks processing self-referential information in the cortical midline. Here, activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex tracks outcome valence regarding both success as well as internal control, and covaries with positive affect in response to outcomes. These affective dynamics also relate to increased functional coupling between the ventral striatum and cortical midline structures. Finally, we show that pride predicts preferences for control, even at monetary costs. Our investigations extend recent models of positive affect and well-being, and emphasize that control beliefs drive intrinsic motivation.

The feedback people receive on their behavior shapes the process of belief formation and self-efficacy in mastering a particular task. However, the neural and computational mechanisms of how the subjective value of self-efficacy beliefs, and the corresponding affect, influence the learning process remain unclear. We investigated these mechanisms during self-efficacy belief formation using fMRI, pupillometry, and computational modeling, and by analyzing individual differences in affective experience. Biases in the formation of self-efficacy beliefs were associated with affect, pupil dilation, and neural activity within the anterior insula, amygdala, ventral tegmental area/ substantia nigra, and mPFC. Specifically, neural and pupil responses mapped the valence of the prediction errors in correspondence with individuals’ experienced affective states and learning biases during self-efficacy belief formation. Together with the functional connectivity dynamics of the anterior insula within this network, our results provide evidence for neural and computational mechanisms of how we arrive at affected beliefs.