ArticleConsciousness and cognition2017
Optimistic update bias holds firm: Three tests of robustness following Shah et al.
Article in Consciousness and cognition, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed.
- Updating Beliefs under Perceived Threat.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Trial
- State Optimism as a State-Dependent Prior About Rewarding Outcomes.Computational brain & behavior · 2026Article
- Self-esteem instability in major depressive disorder: a computational analysis of expectation updating in response to performance feedback.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Effects of depressive symptoms on neuronal processing of social evaluative feedback and subsequent changes in expectations and self-view.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Optimistic bias in updating beliefs about climate change longitudinally predicts low pro-environmental behaviour.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- The Anterior Insula Processes a Time-Resolved Subjective Risk Prediction Error.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Anhedonia Across and Beyond the Schizophrenia Spectrum.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2025Review
- Lesions to Different Regions of the Frontal Cortex Have Dissociable Effects on Voluntary Persistence in Humans.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Towards an expanded neurocognitive account of ketamine's rapid antidepressant effects.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Coping with failures: how emotions, individual traits, expectation-importance and prior experience affect reactions to violated achievement expectations.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Psilocybin increases optimistic engagement over time: computational modelling of behaviour in rats.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- The Universal Optimism of the Self-Evidencing Mind.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Preexposure to one social threat alters responses to another social threat: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Article
- Lesions to different regions of frontal cortex have dissociable effects on voluntary persistence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The shadowing effect of initial expectation on learning asymmetry.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Brain Systems Underlying Fundamental Motivations of Human Social Conformity.Neuroscience bulletin · 2023Review
- Expectations do not need to be accurate to be maintained: Valence and need for cognitive closure predict expectation update vs. persistence.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- There is no belief update bias for neutral events: failure to replicate Burton et al. (2022).Journal of cognitive psychology (Hove, England) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A diverse body of research has demonstrated that people update their beliefs to a greater extent when receiving good news compared to bad news. Recently, a paper by Shah et al. claimed that this asymmetry does not exist. Here we carefully examine the experiments and simulations described in Shah et al. and follow their analytic approach on our data sets. After correcting for confounds we identify in the experiments of Shah et al., an optimistic update bias for positive life events is revealed. Contrary to claims made by Shah et al., we observe that participants update their beliefs in a more Bayesian manner after receiving good news than bad. Finally, we show that the parameters Shah et al. pre-selected for simulations are at odds with participants' data, making these simulations irrelevant to the question asked. Together this report makes a strong case for a true optimistic asymmetry in belief updating.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.