Learning to Look at the Bright Side of Life: Attention Bias Modification Training Enhances Optimism Bias.

ABSTRACT: Identifying neurocognitive mechanisms underlying optimism bias is essential to understand its benefits for well-being and mental health. The combined cognitive biases hypothesis suggests that biases (e.g., in expectancies and attention) interact and mutually enforce each other. Whereas, in line with this hypothesis, optimistic expectancies have been shown to guide attention to positive information, reverse causal effects have not been investigated yet. Revealing such bidirectional optimism-attention interactions both on a behavioral and neural level could explain how cognitive biases contribute to a self-sustaining upward spiral of positivity. In this behavioral study, we hypothesized that extensive training to direct attention to positive information enhances optimism bias. To test this h

SUBMITTER: Kress L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6629951 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature