Learning about own and others’ performance beliefs – new paper published in Scientific Reports!

We are very happy to share that our paper “Negativity-bias in forming beliefs about own abilities” has been published. In this team effort, led by Laura Müller-Pinzler, we introduce a novel social learning paradigm, the LOOP (“learning of own performance” task), that mimics everyday life performance situations. Inferring prediction error (PE) learning rates by fitting computational learning models we assessed the modulatory influence of self-relatedness, prior beliefs, and the social context on belief updating.

We find a specific negativity bias for learning about own performances. Social anxiety affected self-related negativity biases only when individuals were exposed to a judging audience. This finding might explain the persistence of negative self-images in socially anxious individuals which commonly surfaces in social settings.

The manuscript is Open Access and can be downloaded under the following link:

Negativity-bias in forming beliefs about own abilities. Müller-Pinzler L, Czekalla N, Mayer AV, Stolz DS, Gazzola V, Keysers C, Paulus FM & Krach S. Sci Rep. 2019; Oct 8;  9:14416. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50821-w

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