Reduced Belief Updating in the Context of Depressive Symptoms: An Investigation of the Associations with Interpretation Biases and Self-Evaluation

Depressive symptoms are associated with negative expectations and reduced belief updating by positive information. Cognitive immunization, the devaluation of positive information, has been argued to be central in this relationship and predictive processing models suggest that more positive information is associated with greater cognitive immunization.

In an online experiment, N = 347 healthy participants took part in a performance task with standardized feedback of varying levels of positivity (mild, moderate, extreme). Effects of feedback positivity on cognitive immunization were investigated. Further, depressive symptoms, interpretation bias and participant’s self-evaluation were examined as potential correlates of belief updating.

As expected, participants receiving mildly positive feedback reported a greater amount of cognitive immunization than those receiving moderately positive feedback. However, neither group differed from those receiving extremely positive feedback. Although depressive symptoms did not show the hypothesized association with cognitive immunization, they were associated with a weaker increase in positive expectations following feedback. Exploratory analyses showed associations between self-evaluation and belief updating.

The results suggest that healthy participants engaged in cognitive immunization when feedback was less positive than expected. Depressive symptoms were associated with reduced belief updating, but not with cognitive immunization. Self-evaluation may be a promising factor for future research.