thoughts and moods directly influence reality. Having a cynical personality can lead to inaccurate predictions and cloud judgment.
That’s the premise of a recent study investigating how student expectations of exam grades can reveal their overall outlook on life.“Whether we are conscious of it or not, we’re always forming expectations,” said Aaron Heller, senior author in the study and an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. “Whenever our expectations turned out to be wrong, they become a learning signal that we use to form better expectations in the future.”Pessimistic people tend to have low expectations of themselves and others to avoid being let down.
However, this usually sets them up for mental health problems like anxiety in the future.The study authors wrote, “Individuals with elevated negative emotionality, a personality trait linked to the development of anxiety disorders, displayed a global pessimism and learning differences that impeded accurate expectations and predicted future anxiety symptoms.”Below, we’ll discuss the study in greater detail and provide some coping mechanisms for anxiety.Earlier prediction error (PE) studies performed in a laboratory used simulations involving small financial rewards.
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