Don’t like what you see? Give it time: Longer reaction times associated with increased positive affect.

Abstract

Images with an ambiguous valence (e.g., surprised facial expressions) are interpreted by some people as having a negative valence, and by others, as having a more positive valence. Despite these individual differences in valence bias, the more automatic interpretation is negative, and positivity appears to require regulation. Interestingly, extant research has shown that there is an age-related positivity effect such that relative to young adults, older adults attend to and remember positive more than negative information. In this report, the authors show that this positivity effect extends to emotional ambiguity (Experiment 1). Eighty participants (aged 19-71, 42 females) rated the valence of images with a clear or ambiguous valence. They found that age correlated with valence bias, such that older adults showed a more positive bias, and they took longer to rate images, than younger adults. They also found that this increase in reaction times was sufficient to bias positivity (Experiment 2). Thirty-four participants (aged 18-28, 24 females) rated ambiguous and clear images, before and after an instruction to delay their RTs. They also found that although ratings among individuals with a positive bias did not change, those with a negative bias became more positive when encouraged to delay. Indeed, participants with the strongest negativity bias showed the greatest increase in RTs. Taken together, this work demonstrates that the valence bias, which represents a stable, trait-like difference across people, can be moved in the positive direction, at least temporarily, when participants are encouraged to take their time and consider alternatives. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individual differences in valence bias: fMRI evidence of the initial negativity hypothesis

“…Also, a pattern similarity analysis revealed that individuals with a negative valence bias showed amygdala responses to surprised faces that were similar to maintaining negative affect towards negatively valence IAPS scenes during an emotion regulation task. Taken together, this study supports the prevailing hypothesis that positive interpretations of ambiguous stimuli involve mechanisms common to reappraisal during explicit emotion regulation (Neta and Tong, 2016), and is consistent with the notion that negative interpretations tend to be the initial response (Kim et al , 2003; Kaffenberger et al , 2010; Neta and Whalen, 2010; Neta et al , 2011). …”

“…Additionally, all participants were Caucasian to control for any cross-race effects when making judgments about emotional expressions of Caucasian faces. Three participants were excluded because they failed to provide accurate ratings of clearly valenced faces (angry, happy) on at least 60% of trials, as in previous work (Neta et al , 2009, 2013, 2018; Neta and Tong, 2016; Brown et al , 2017). Three additional participants were removed because they did not complete the neuroimaging portion of the task, resulting in a final sample of 51 participants (26 female; ages 17–30 years, mean age = 20.7, s.d.…”

“…Despite individual differences in ratings of emotional ambiguity, initial responses toward ambiguous stimuli tend to be more negative compared with delayed responses (Kim et al , 2003; Kaffenberger et al , 2010; Neta and Whalen, 2010; Neta et al , 2011; Neta and Tong, 2016). For example, reaction times are longer when rating ambiguous cues as positive compared with negative (Neta and Tong, 2016), and surprised faces are detected more quickly as an oddball among positive (happy) compared to among negative (angry) faces (Neta et al , 2011).…”

“…Without a clarifying context, individuals must rely on personal experiences and biases in order to make decisions about the valence of these faces. Along these lines, ratings of surprised relative to angry or happy expressions comprise longer reaction times and larger variability across individuals (Neta et al , 2009; 2013; Neta and Tong, 2016). This variability in ratings of surprised faces provides insight into a stable, trait-like individual difference in valence bias (the tendency to interpret surprised faces as positive or negative).…”

“…For example, reaction times are longer when rating ambiguous cues as positive compared with negative (Neta and Tong, 2016), and surprised faces are detected more quickly as an oddball among positive (happy) compared to among negative (angry) faces (Neta et al , 2011). Other work has shown that faster visual processing of surprised faces results in more negative interpretations (Neta and Whalen, 2010), and that positive ratings are associated with a strong attraction toward the competing (negative) response option (Neta et al , in preparation).…”