ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2021
Optimistic amnesia: how online and offline processing shape belief updating and memory biases in immediate and long-term optimism biases.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- The causal role of the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortices on emotion regulation of social feedback.Human brain mapping · 2022Trial
- Emotion regulation modulates subsequent control of unwanted memories.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Strategic mindset facilitates social feedback processing and self-concept adjustment.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- General public takes up counterintuitive expert advice on effective climate action.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Targeting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to enhance memory control: divergent effects on social and non-social memories.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Right Frontal Gamma Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Modulates Optimism Biases.Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Article
- Be Careful When Using Peer-Influence on Nudging Solicitation: Evidence of Potential Negative Effect from a Sample of Chinese University Students.Psychology research and behavior management · 2023Article
- The Neural and Psychological Processes of Peer-Influenced Online Donation Decision: An Event-Related Potential Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- No Evidence for the Involvement of Cognitive Immunisation in Updating Beliefs About the Self in Three Non-Clinical Samples.Cognitive therapy and research · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
When people are confronted with feedback that counters their prior beliefs, they preferentially rely on desirable rather than undesirable feedback in belief updating, i.e. an optimism bias. In two pre-registered EEG studies employing an adverse life event probability estimation task, we investigated the neurocognitive processes that support the formation and the change of optimism biases in immediate and 24 h delayed tests. We found that optimistic belief updating biases not only emerged immediately but also became significantly larger after 24 h, suggesting an active role of valence-dependent offline consolidation processes in the change of optimism biases. Participants also showed optimistic memory biases: they were less accurate in remembering undesirable than desirable feedback probabilities, with inferior memories of undesirable feedback associated with lower belief updating in the delayed test. Examining event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that desirability of feedback biased initial encoding: desirable feedback elicited larger P300s than undesirable feedback, with larger P300 amplitudes predicting both higher belief updating and memory accuracies. These results suggest that desirability of feedback could bias both online and offline memory-related processes such as encoding and consolidation, with both processes contributing to the formation and change of optimism biases.
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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.