Is depression associated with reduced optimistic belief updating?

Abstract

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.

Coping with expectation violations in education: the role of optimism bias and need for cognitive closure

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The mediation role of psychological capital between family relationship and antenatal depressive symptoms among women with advanced maternal age: a cross sectional study

“…Based on previous studies and the following assumptions, we proposed that PsyCap functions as an important mediator. Women with higher self-efficacy may have more confidence to cope with risk during the pregnancy [ 29 ]; hope may contribute to a woman’s positive expectancy toward the fetus and their own health and have less focus on negative effects related to older age [ 30 ]; women with optimistic views may have positive attributions to pregnancy outcomes and deflect responsibility for negative events through an optimistic explanation [ 31 ]; when facing stressors during pregnancy, women with resilience may bounce back to normal life more quickly [ 19 , 32 ].…”

Right frontal gamma transcranial alternating current stimulation modulates optimism biases

“…These ndings suggest that the neuroplastic changes induced by tACS may be consolidated during the post-stimulation o ine period. Additionally, the potential of 40 Hz tACS to alter a pessimism mindset, opens avenues for therapeutic applications, particularly for individuals with depression or those who show de cits in optimistic processing (Hobbs et al, 2022;Korn et al, 2014). Therefore, to validate these ndings and understand their clinical relevance, future studies are encouraged to assess the e cacy of 40 Hz-tACS in depressed populations, thereby bridging the gap between experimental results and therapeutic potential.…”

“…The optimism bias emerges due to the preferential encoding and consolidation of desirable over undesirable information (Garrett et al, 2018;Kuzmanovic et al, 2016Kuzmanovic et al, , 2018Sharot et al, 2012;Yao et al, 2021), a process that likely involves frontal brain regions such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and inferior frontal gyrus (Sharot et al, 2011). Optimism bias plays a crucial role in mental health, with its absence potentially leading to psychiatric disorders like depression, characterized by a reduced inclination to process positive future outcomes (Hobbs et al, 2022;Korn et al, 2014). This link highlights the potential value of cognitive interventions aimed at enhancing optimism bias (Kube, 2023).…”