Instigated by evidence for reduced responsiveness to reward in depression, the present two studies addressed the question if such anhedonic behavior would also become evident in reduced mobilization of mental effort in terms of cardiovascular reactivity. Undergraduates completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D) and worked on mental tasks, expecting either no consequence, a performance-contingent reward, or a performance-contingent punishment. Study 1 revealed that participants with low CES-D scores showed high systolic blood pressure reactivity in the punishment condition, whereas participants with high CES-D scores showed low systolic reactivity. Study 2 corroborated this finding for reward: Nondysphoric participants expecting a reward showed higher reactivity of systolic blood pressure and pre-ejection period than participants in the neutral condition or than dysphoric participants. Together, the studies demonstrate that reward insensitivity in (subclinical) depression is also found in cardiovascular reactivity. Furthermore, dysphoric individuals do not respond to punishment either, suggesting a general insensitivity to hedonic consequences.

optimism bias, i.e. expecting the future to hold more desirable than undesirable outcomes, also extends to people that we like or admire. However, it remains unknown how the brain generates this social optimism bias. in this study, respondents estimated the likelihood of future desirable and undesirable outcomes for an in-group and three out-groups: warm-incompetent, cold-competent, and cold-incompetent. We found a strong social optimism bias for the in-group and the warm outgroup and an inverted pattern for the cold-incompetent out-group. for all groups, scores of social optimism bias correlated with the brain activity in structures that respondents differentially engaged depending on the target social group. in line with our hypotheses, evaluating the in-group recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex, whereas evaluating the warm out-group engaged the posterior insula, mid cingulate cortex, and somatosensory cortices. these findings suggest different underlying cognitive mechanisms of social optimism bias for these groups, despite similar behavioural patterns. thinking about the cold out-groups recruited the right anterior temporal lobe, and temporoparietal junction. evaluating the cold-incompetent out-group additionally recruited the anterior insula, inferior frontal cortex and dorsomedial frontal cortex. We discuss these neuroimaging findings with respect to their putative cognitive functions. Human minds are highly capable of solving problems at hand, anticipating prospective issues and benefits, and planning accordingly. At the core of these skills lies the capacity to gauge the likelihood of future events 1-3. The way we assess the likelihood of future events in the general population is different from how we assess it for ourselves 4-6 , for those close to us 7-10 , and for in-group 11,12 and out-group members 11-19. Through various motivational 20,21 and cognitive mechanisms 22,23 , we manifest an optimism bias whenever we think about our future and the future of those close to us 4,8,10,11,13 but not of acquaintances or dissimilar others 8,11,14,24,25. Specifically, we expect that the future holds significantly more desirable than undesirable outcomes for ourselves and those we identify with 26. Despite a modest body of behavioural research on social optimism bias, i.e. optimism manifested towards people that we like and feel close to, very little is known about how the brain gives rise to this phenomenon 18. The primary focus of the current study was to investigate the neural correlates of group membership-driven optimism biases. To pursue this research aim and inform our hypotheses, we considered the neuroimaging literature on person perception and social cognition. A hallmark of social cognition is that individuals think differently about in-group and out-group members 27-32. Although what determines in-group and out-group membership is flexible and highly contextual 30,33 , people perceive in-group and out-group members as part of different entities wi...

Optimism biases denote the tendency to see future desirable events as being more likely to happen to oneself than undesirable events. Such biases are important for mental health and may extend to other individuals or social groups (social optimism biases). However, little is known about whether social optimism biases relate to brain structure. Using sparse canonical correlation analysis, we associated cortical thickness (assessed by magnetic resonance imaging) with measures of social and personal optimism bias, trait optimism, and related concepts. We identified a defensive self-enhancement dimension that associated significantly and reliably with the cortical thickness of the insula and inferior frontal cortex. This self-enhancement dimension included unfavorable biases toward unpopular out-groups and indicators of personal optimism and pessimism. A shared biological substrate underlying future expectancies that subserves the promotion of the self and the denigration of unpopular out-groups may render society-wide efforts to counteract stereotyping particularly difficult: Such efforts may hinder the establishment of adaptive personal optimism biases.

Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing. Recent findings suggest dynamic bidirectional optimism-attention interactions, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain to be identified. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, therefore, investigated the neural mechanisms underlying causal effects of optimistic expectancies on attention. We hypothesized that expectancies guide attention to confirmatory evidence in the environment, with enhanced salience and executive control network (SN/ECN) activity for unexpected information. Moreover, based on previous findings, we anticipated optimistic expectancies to more strongly impact attention and SN/ECN activity than pessimistic expectancies. Expectancies were induced with visual cues in 50 participants; subsequent attention to reward and punishment was assessed in a visual search task. As hypothesized, cues shortened reaction times to expected information, and unexpected information enhanced SN/ECN activity. Notably, these effects were stronger for optimistic than pessimistic expectancy cues. Our findings suggest that optimistic expectancies involve particularly strong predictions of reward, causing automatic guidance of attention to reward and great surprise about unexpected punishment. Such great surprise may be counteracted by visual avoidance of the punishing evidence, as revealed by prior evidence, thereby reducing the need to update (over)optimistic reward expectancies.Most of us are overly optimistic about our future 1,2 . This optimism bias and similar cognitive phenomena such as positive attention bias (preferably attending to positive vs. neutral information in our environment 3 ) influence the way we see the world. Despite the fact that both biases are considered as important features of healthy information processing 1,4,5 and share an association with positive health outcomes 6,7 , optimism bias and positive attention bias have mostly been examined separately.The combined cognitive biases hypothesis suggests that cognitive biases usually interact and mutually enforce each other and, together, have a greater impact than each bias on its own 8,9 . The combined cognitive biases hypothesis was originally proposed based on findings of a reciprocal relationship between negative self-imagery and biased interpretation in social phobia but has soon been extended to other psychological disorders such as depression (e.g. interacting biases in attention, interpretation, memory, cognitive control) 10 and anxiety (e.g., expectancy and attention bias interactions) 8 .Moreover, we 11 have argued that cognitive bias interactions are not restricted to negative biases that maintain psychological dysfunction. Instead, they may well translate to positivity biases promoting psychological function. Specifically, we proposed a bidirectional interplay, namely (a) optimistic expectancies guide attention to positive information in the environment, and (b) directing attention to positive information enhanc...