Psychology Commons^™

Individual Differences In Valence Bias: Fmri Evidence Of The Initial Negativity Hypothesis, Nathan M. Petro, Tien T. Tong, Daniel J. Henley, Maital Neta

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Facial expressions offer an ecologically valid model for examining individual differences in affective decision-making. They convey an emotional signal from a social agent and provide important predictive information about one’s environment (presence of potential rewards or threats). Although some expressions provide clear predictive information (angry, happy), others (surprised) are ambiguous in that they predict both positive and negative outcomes. Thus, surprised faces can delineate an individual’s valence bias, or the tendency to interpret ambiguity as positive or negative. Our initial negativity hypothesis suggests that the initial response to ambiguity is negative, and that positivity relies on emotion regulation. We tested …