Twice the negativity bias and half the positivity offset: Evaluative responses to emotional information in depression

Abstract

Background and Objectives Humans have the dual capacity to assign a slightly pleasant valence to neutral stimuli (the positivity offset) to encourage approach behaviors, as well as to assign a higher negative valence to unpleasant images relative to the positive valence to equally arousing and extreme pleasant images (the negativity bias) to facilitate defensive strategies. We conducted an experimental psychopathology study to examine the extent to which the negativity bias and the positivity offset differ in participants with and without major depression. Method Forty-one depressed and thirty-six healthy participants were evaluated using a structured clinical interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders, questionnaires, and a computerized task designed to measure implicit affective responses to unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant stimuli. Results The negativity bias was significantly higher and the positivity offset was significantly lower in depressed relative to healthy participants. Limitations Entry criteria enrolling medication-free participants with minimal DSM-IV comorbidity may limit generalizability of the findings. Conclusions This study advances our understanding of the positive and negative valence systems in depression, highlighting the irregularities in the positive valence system.

Rapid Extraction of Emotion Regularities from Complex Scenes in the Human Brain

“…From an evolutionary perspective, this activation function enables organisms to explore novel environments, with the ultimate goal to find additional sources of nourishment and protection as well as occasions for mating and reproduction (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994;Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999). Research has shown that positivity offset (as well as negativity bias) can be generalized across different kinds of stimuli (Norris, Larsen, Crawford, & Cacioppo, 2011), is temporally stable and trait-like consistent (Ito & Cacioppo, 2005), and can be used as a theoretical construct to interpret serotonergic function in healthy and clinical populations (Ashare, Norris, Wileyto, Cacioppo, & Strasser, 2013;Carver, Johnson, & Joormann, 2009;Gollan et al, 2016). During our task, positivity offset may have outweighed negativity bias because of the absence of proximal environmental danger which, in turn, promoted exploration (Ito & Cacioppo, 2005;Schettino, Loeys, Bossi, & Pourtois, 2012;Schettino, Loeys, Delplanque, & Pourtois, 2011;Schettino, Loeys, & Pourtois, 2013).…”

Rapid extraction of emotion regularities from complex scenes in the human brain

“…From an evolutionary perspective, this activation function enables organisms to explore novel environments, with the ultimate goal to find additional sources of nourishment and protection as well as occasions for mating and reproduction (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994;Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999). Research has shown that positivity offset (as well as negativity bias) can be generalized across different kinds of stimuli (Norris, Larsen, Crawford, & Cacioppo, 2011), is temporally stable and trait-like consistent (Ito & Cacioppo, 2005), and can be used as a theoretical construct to interpret serotonergic function in healthy and clinical populations (Ashare, Norris, Wileyto, Cacioppo, & Strasser, 2013;Carver, Johnson, & Joormann, 2009;Gollan et al, 2016). During our task, positivity offset may have outweighed negativity bias because of the absence of proximal environmental danger which, in turn, promoted exploration (Ito & Cacioppo, 2005;Schettino, Loeys, Bossi, & Pourtois, 2012;Schettino, Loeys, Delplanque, & Pourtois, 2011;Schettino, Loeys, & Pourtois, 2013).…”

Comparison of Ecological Micro-Expression Recognition in Patients with Depression and Healthy Individuals

“…Previous studies have shown that, in addition to sex (Hall and Matsumoto, 2004 ), age (Mill et al, 2009 ; Hurley et al, 2014 ) and personality (Hurley et al, 2014 ), depression (Liu et al, 2012 ; Gollan et al, 2015b ; Kerestes et al, 2016 ; Milders et al, 2016 ) can affect one’s performance when recognizing ordinary facial expressions. Depression is one of the most common mental illness (Bocharov et al, 2017 ); the official website of WHO reports that the global prevalence of patients with depression exceeds 300 million.…”