Dear all,
Next Wednesday (20.05), we will have a guest speaker in our clinical colloquium. Prof. Dr. Erik Müller from the University of Marburg will present an integrative theoretical model on biases expectancies, interpretations, and expectancy updating (abstract below).
We will meet in the seminar room of the Accouchierhaus at 14:00 and everyone is welcome to join.
I hope to see you there!
Best wishes,
Elinor
Abstract:
Why some of us persistently expect the worst while everything is fine – a PRIMER perspective
Being able to accurately expect, process and respond to threats –and negatively valenced events more generally– is essential for survival. However, in relatively benign environments, expecting negatively valenced events when there are none also comes with severe costs. These include experiencing unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and missing out on life, for example due to avoidance behavior. Unfortunately, we are sometimes unable to update our negatively valenced expectancies to match the actual more benign contingencies in the world. For some of us, this may then lead to continually expecting the worst and experiencing negative affect which may then manifest as elevated trait neuroticism or even as mental disorders involving anxiety and depression. Here, I attempt to systematically present the most important mechanisms that lead to the persistence of negatively valenced expectancies in benign contexts. To this end, I will first present our recently proposed PRIMER framework of expectancy persistence which spells out a temporal information processing and action sequence of expectancy change involving Prediction, Response selection, Interpretation, Meaning making, Expectancy updating and Retention. I will next go through the six PRIMER stages to present studies on mechanisms that stabilize threat expectancies, including recent EEG and behavioral studies from our lab investigating fear conditioning and extinction, imagery, information search biases, nocebo effects and cognitive immunization. I will then show work suggesting that individual differences in some of these mechanisms are linked to negative-affect-related personality traits and anxiety disorders. Finally, recommendations for interventions that target the change of negatively valenced expectancies in anxiety and depression will be derived from the PRIMER framework.
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Elinor Abado, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology
