Updating Beliefs Under Perceived Threat

Garrett, Neil; González-Garzón, Ana; Foulkes, Lucy; Levita, Liat; Sharot, Tali

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3155415

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…These estimates are within the realm of epidemiological norms [11,29,30]. We also observed some positive correlations between anxiety and choice behavior that were consistent with effects found in previous literature [43][44][45]. For example, we found higher lose-shift rates and higher learning rates following negative prediction errors correlated with self-reported anxiety.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Inattentive responding can induce spurious associations between task behavior and symptom measures

Zorowitz¹,

Niv²,

Bennett³

2021

Preprint

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A common research design in the field of computational psychiatry involves leveraging the power of online participant recruitment to assess correlations between behavior in cognitive tasks and the self-reported severity of psychiatric symptoms in large, diverse samples. Although large online samples have many advantages for psychiatric research, some potential pitfalls of this research design are not widely understood. Here we detail circumstances in which entirely spurious correlations may arise between task behavior and symptom severity as a result of inadequate screening of careless or low-effort responding on psychiatric symptom surveys. Specifically, since many psychiatric symptom surveys have asymmetric ground-truth score distributions in the general population, participants who respond carelessly on these surveys will show apparently elevated symptom levels. If these participants are similarly careless in their task performance, and are not excluded from analysis, this may result in a spurious association between greater symptom scores and worse behavioral task performance. Here, we demonstrate exactly this pattern of results in N = 386 participants recruited online to complete a self-report symptom battery and a short reversal-learning choice task. We show that many behavior-symptom correlations are entirely abolished when participants flagged for careless responding on surveys are excluded from analysis. We also show that exclusion based on task performance alone is not sufficient to prevent these spurious correlations. Of note, we demonstrate that false-positive rates for these spurious correlations increase with sample size, contrary to common assumptions. We offer guidance on how researchers using this general experimental design can guard against this issue in future research; in particular, we recommend the adoption of screening methods for self-report measures that are currently uncommon in this field.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Inattentive responding can induce spurious associations between task behavior and symptom measures

Zorowitz¹,

Niv²,

Bennett³

2021

Preprint

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“…Thus, overly optimistic beliefs are further reinforced by a selective filter that generates a feedback loop that facilitates the persistence of biased beliefs. A further study found that this optimistic bias in belief updating diminishes when people are under perceived threat: Both in participants with experimentally induced stress and in firefighters on duty, Garrett, González-Garzón, Foulkes, Levita, and Sharot (2018) found that under perceived threat, healthy people are more sensitive to bad news and better integrate it into their beliefs than in the absence of threat. The authors interpreted their findings in light of psychological flexibility, meaning that healthy people can flexibly adjust their otherwise optimistic belief-updating bias when situational circumstances require it.…”

Section: The Optimism Biasmentioning

confidence: 96%

When Beliefs Face Reality: An Integrative Review of Belief Updating in Mental Health and Illness

Kube

Rozenkrantz

2020

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Belief updating is a relatively nascent field of research that examines how people adjust their beliefs in light of new evidence. So far, belief updating has been investigated in partly unrelated lines of research from different psychological disciplines. In this article, we aim to integrate these disparate lines of research. After presenting some prominent theoretical frameworks and experimental designs that have been used for the study of belief updating, we review how healthy people and people with mental disorders update their beliefs after receiving new information that supports or challenges their views. Available evidence suggests that both healthy people and people with particular mental disorders are prone to certain biases when updating their beliefs, although the nature of the respective biases varies considerably and depends on several factors. Anomalies in belief updating are discussed in terms of both new insights into the psychopathology of various mental disorders and societal implications, such as irreconcilable political and societal controversies due to the failure to take information into account that disconfirms one’s own view. We conclude by proposing a novel integrative model of belief updating and derive directions for future research.

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“…So why mightas our data suggests -humans have evolved to modulate learning in such a way that deviates from these normative accounts? Sensitivity to new information can vary according to many factors such as surprise (Pearce and Hall, 1980), volatility (Behrens et al, 2007) and arousal levels (Dundon et al, 2020, Garrett et al, 2018, Li et al, 2011. One possibility is that the valence of the outcome received acts as a cue which modulates learning (via arousal for instance).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model sharing in the human medial temporal lobe

Summerfield

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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Effective planning involves knowing where different actions will take us. However natural environments are rich and complex, leading to a "curse of dimensionality" - an exponential increase in memory demand as a plan grows in depth. One potential solution to this problem is to generalise the neural state transition functions used for planning between similar contexts. Here, we asked human participants to perform a sequential decision making task designed so that knowledge could be shared between some contexts but not others. Computational modelling showed that participants generalise a transition model between contexts where appropriate. fMRI data identified the medial temporal lobe as a locus for learning of state transitions, and within the same region, correlated BOLD patterns were observed in contexts where state transition information was shared. Finally, we show that the transition model is updated more strongly following the receipt of positive compared to negative outcomes, a finding that challenges conventional theories of planning which assume knowledge about our environment is updated independently of outcomes received. Together, these findings propose a computational and neural account of how information relevant for planning can be shared between contexts.

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Updating Beliefs Under Perceived Threat

Cited by 12 publications

References 49 publications

Inattentive responding can induce spurious associations between task behavior and symptom measures

Inattentive responding can induce spurious associations between task behavior and symptom measures

When Beliefs Face Reality: An Integrative Review of Belief Updating in Mental Health and Illness

Model sharing in the human medial temporal lobe

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