Whether people are pondering the pros and cons of a purchase or evaluating an interaction with a new person, they can exhibit a bias toward giving more weight to information that is perceived as positive or negative. new JNeurosci In this paper, Ulrike Basten from RPTU-University Kaiserslautern-Landau and the University of Amsterdam and colleagues investigated whether individual differences in the benefits and costs of processing are associated with psychological resilience.
The researchers presented 82 participants with images of shapes in different colors. Colors and shapes were associated with profits and losses that translated into actual money and expenses at the end of the experiment. Given the same presentation of different colored shapes, some participants generally placed less weight on mild losses and were therefore more accepting of offers. Basten further emphasizes this point: ”These people place less value on rewards, less value on negative outcomes, and are more likely to accept offers with mixed outcomes. Different ways of processing negative information“Why is this the case? The researchers found that participants who placed less weight on minor losses had a stronger increase in prefrontal cortex activity in response to losses and a stronger decrease in activity in response to gains. These differences in brain responses mediate the association between acceptance bias in decision-making and higher self-reported psychological resilience.”
The researchers say their work suggests that people may be able to control their thoughts and feelings about loss by intensifying their prefrontal cortex responses to negative information. This control may make these people more psychologically resilient. Basten says,Since we cannot claim causation from our findings, the next step might be to manipulate bias by rewarding certain answers, training people to show more positive bias in their decision-making and see if this leads to increased resilience. ”
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Reference magazines:
Ramensee, R.A.et al. (2026). Positivity bias in value-based decision making: Resilience and neurocognitive associations. neuroscience journal. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1734-25.2026. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2026/05/04/JNEUROSCI.1734-25.2026
