Affect-congruent attention modulates generalized reward expectations.

ABSTRACT: Positive and negative affective states are respectively associated with optimistic and pessimistic expectations regarding future reward. One mechanism that might underlie these affect-related expectation biases is attention to positive- versus negative-valence features (e.g., attending to the positive reviews of a restaurant versus its expensive price). Here we tested the effects of experimentally induced positive and negative affect on feature-based attention in 120 participants completing a compound-generalization task with eye-tracking. We found that participants' reward expectations for novel compound stimuli were modulated in an affect-congruent way: positive affect induction increased reward expectations for compounds, whereas negative affect induction decreased reward expectations.

SUBMITTER: Bennett D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10781156 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature