Does the future look bright? Processing style determines the impact of valence weighting biases and self-beliefs on expectations.

Abstract

People regularly form expectations about their future, and whether those expectations are positive or negative can have important consequences. So, what determines the valence of people’s expectations? Research seeking to answer this question by using an individual-differences approach has established that trait biases in optimistic/pessimistic self-beliefs and, more recently, trait biases in behavioral tendencies to weight one’s past positive versus negative experiences more heavily each predict the valence of people’s typical expectations. However, these two biases do not correlate, suggesting limits on a purely individual-differences approach to predicting people’s expectations. We hypothesize that, because these two biases appear to operate via distinct processes (with self-beliefs operating top-down and valence weighting bias operating bottom-up), to predict a person’s expectations on a given occasion, it is also critical to consider situational factors influencing processing style. To test this hypothesis, we investigated how an integral part of future thinking that influences processing style—mental imagery—determines each bias’s influence. Two experiments measured valence weighting biases and optimistic/pessimistic self-beliefs, then manipulated whether participants formed expectations using their own first-person visual perspective (which facilitates bottom-up processes) or an external third-person visual perspective (which facilitates top-down processes). Expectations corresponded more with valence weighting biases from the first-person (vs. third-person) but more with self-beliefs from the third-person (vs. first-person). Two additional experiments manipulated valence weighting bias, demonstrating its causal role in shaping expectations (and behaviors) with first-person, but not third-person, imagery. These results suggest the two biases operate via distinct processes, holding implications for interventions to increase optimism.

I can see myself enjoying that: Using imagery perspective to circumvent bias in self-perceptions of interest.

“…However, the present research contributes to a growing body of work that suggests a qualitatively distinct cognitive function that imagery can serve: shaping processing style. In this case, the mechanism by which imagery operates depends not on the content that is depicted, but on the perspective from which that content is depicted, as demonstrated in the current Experiments 3 and 4 (Niese et al, 2018;Shaeffer et al, 2015).…”

“…Accordingly, picturing life events from the first-person (vs. third-person) perspective causes people's interpretation of an event to more closely correspond with their associative evaluations of objects in the scene (Libby et al, 2014) and with trait biases in the processes underlying their experiential reactions (Niese, et al, 2018).…”

“…The present research contributes to a growing body of research suggesting that imagery perspective influences processing style, while also validating and further specifying the proposed nature of processing that occurs according to each imagery perspective. In particular, previous research suggests that third-person (vs. first-person) imagery facilitates a top-down processing style that helps people connect their past, present, and future selves into a coherent narrative (Libby et al, 2011;Macrae et al, 2017), thereby causing people to rely more on their self-beliefs when making judgments (Libby & Eibach, 2011;Libby et al, 2014;Marigold, et al, 2015;Niese et al, 2018;Vasquez & Buehler, 2007). The current results provide convergent evidence for this account by demonstrating how people's self-beliefs about their interest in a domain shape their recall with third-person (but not first-person) imagery.…”

“…However, not only can one's pre-existing self-beliefs introduce bias (as in the current experiments), but a host of research suggests that people often do not use their self-beliefs to guide their judgments and behavior: people's self-beliefs did not predict measures of their actual experience of interest in the current Experiment 1, people show different implicitly-vs. explicitly-measured preferences (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2007;Rydell & McConnell, 2006;Olson & Fazio, 2008), and people do not always act in line with their values and long-term goals (Fujita, 2011). Further, people even display trait behavioral tendencies that do not align with their self-beliefs (e.g., Fazio, Pietri, Rocklage, & Shook, 2015;Niese et al, 2018). As such, the value of self-beleifs may seem rather limited.…”

“…In particular, the extent to which people process information on a given occasion in relation to their experiential vs. conceptual self should influence the extent to which they behave in line with one trait difference or the other. Indeed, a set of experiments demonstrated that guiding participants to use first-person or third-person imagery to make predictions about upcoming events shifted the extent to which they relied on two types of distinct trait biases in expectation formation (Niese et al, 2018). Specifically, when encountering novel situations, people display trait behavioral biases in the extent to which they draw on their past positive (vs. negative) learning to form expectations about how the situation will unfold .…”