ArticleScience advances2023
Individual differences in naturalistic learning link negative emotionality to the development of anxiety.
Article in Science advances, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Dissociable roles of reward prediction error in the contrasting mood dynamics of depression and anxiety.eLife · 2026Article
- Article
- A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Failing Others' Expectations: Negative Emotions and Behavior Change in Daily Life.Affective science · 2026Article
- Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Signatures of reinforcement learning in natural behavior.Current directions in psychological science · 2025Article
- The Causes and Consequences of Drifting Expectations.Psychological science · 2024Article
- Reduced effects of social feedback on learning in Turner syndrome.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Brain mediators of biased social learning of self-perception in social anxiety disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- Neurocognitive biases from the lab to real life.Communications biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Organisms learn from prediction errors (PEs) to predict the future. Laboratory studies using small financial outcomes find that humans use PEs to update expectations and link individual differences in PE-based learning to internalizing disorders. Because of the low-stakes outcomes in most tasks, it is unclear whether PE learning emerges in naturalistic, high-stakes contexts and whether individual differences in PE learning predict psychopathology risk. Using experience sampling to assess 625 college students' expected exam grades, we found evidence of PE-based learning and a general tendency to discount negative PEs, an "optimism bias." However, individuals with elevated negative emotionality, a personality trait linked to the development of anxiety disorders, displayed a global pessimism and learning differences that impeded accurate expectations and predicted future anxiety symptoms. A sensitivity to PEs combined with an aversion to negative PEs may result in a pessimistic and inaccurate model of the world, leading to anxiety.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.