title: Is self-positive information more appealing than money? Individual differences in positivity bias according to depressive symptoms.
abstract: The self-positivity bias, which is inherent to healthy people, is known to be blunted in depression. The lack of positive or excessive negative self-reference is considered to be a potential mechanism underlying depressive rumination. However, the motivational factors that drive people to approach and avoid emotional self-related materials are still unclear. Therefore, we measured intrinsic motivation that is associated with emotional self-references by using a reward-based decision-making task (pay-per-view paradigm). Forty-nine undergraduates completed two tasks in which they were asked to choose between negative vs. positive references (Task 1) and self vs. other references (Task 2) for variable monetary rewards. Participants with lower levels of depressive symptoms showed a self-positivity bias, sacrificing rewards for the opportunity to engage in positive self-reference, whereas those with higher levels of depressive symptoms had no specific preference for either negative or positive self-reference (Task 1). However, all participants sacrificed monetary rewards for the opportunity for self-reference versus other reference, regardless of the symptom level or the primed valence (Task 2). Together, these findings suggest that depressive cognition could be characterised by the lack of intrinsic motivation for positive self-reference, which is attributable to the biased valence selection, but not to self-other preferences.
authors.affiliation: a Center for Learning and Experimental Psychopathology , University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.|b College of Humanity and Sciences , Nihon University , Tokyo , Japan.
authors.forename: Keisuke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Takano
authors.affiliation: c Graduate School of Arts and Sciences , University of Tokyo , Tokyo , Japan.
authors.forename: Yudai
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Iijima
authors.affiliation: b College of Humanity and Sciences , Nihon University , Tokyo , Japan.
authors.forename: Shinji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sakamoto
authors.affiliation: a Center for Learning and Experimental Psychopathology , University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.
authors.forename: Filip
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Raes
authors.affiliation: c Graduate School of Arts and Sciences , University of Tokyo , Tokyo , Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshihiko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tanno
keywords: Self; depression; motivation; positivity bias; reward