Publication date: Jun 30, 2025
Optimistically biased belief updating is essential for mental health and resilience in adversity. Here, we asked how experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic affected optimism biases in updating beliefs about the future. One hundred and twenty-three participants estimated the risk of experiencing adverse future life events in the face of belief-disconfirming evidence either outside the pandemic (n=58) or during the pandemic (n=65). While belief updating was optimistically biased and Reinforcement-learning-like outside the pandemic, the bias faded, and belief updating became more rational Bayesian-like during the pandemic. This malleability of anticipating the future during the COVID-19 pandemic was further underpinned by a lower integration of positive belief-disconfirming information, fewer but stronger negative estimations, and more confidence in base rates. The findings offer a window into the putative cognitive mechanisms of belief updating during the COVID-19 pandemic, driven more by quantifying the uncertainty of the future than by the motivational salience of optimistic outlooks.
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Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | COVID-19 pandemic |
| disease | MESH | uncertainty |
| disease | IDO | cell |
| disease | IDO | process |
| disease | MESH | anxiety |
| disease | MESH | depression |
| disease | MESH | paranoia |
| disease | MESH | emergency |