Human development of the ability to learn from bad news
Open accessAbstract
Humans show a natural tendency to discount bad news while incorporating good news into beliefs (the “good news–bad news effect”), an effect that may help explain seemingly irrational risk taking. Understanding how this bias develops with age is important because adolescents are prone to engage in risky behavior; thus, educating them about danger is crucial. We reveal a striking valence-dependent asymmetry in how belief updating develops with age. In the ages tested (9–26 y), younger age was associated with inaccurate updating of beliefs in response to undesirable information regarding vulnerability. In contrast, the ability to update beliefs accurately in response to desirable information remained relatively stable with age. This asymmetry was mediated by adequate computational use of positive but not negative estimation errors to alter beliefs. The results are important for understanding how belief formation develops and might help explain why adolescents do not respond adequately to warnings.
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Children were more likely to update accurately for good news compared to bad news, and with age, the differences in updating between good news and bad news decreased and lost significance in adulthood.
“Similarly, in a belief-updating task on good and bad news by Moutsiana et al., children were more likely to update accurately for good news compared to bad news, and with age, the differences in updating between good news and bad news decreased and lost significance in adulthood [43].”
From The neuroscience of emotion regulation development: Implications for education (2016) · cites this paper as [43]
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Forming beliefs: Why valence matters
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“Behavioral analysis was conducted as described previously (Sharot et al., 2011, 2012a,b; Chowdhury et al., 2013; Korn et al., 2013; Moutsiana et al., 2013) using IBM SPSS statistics (version 19).”
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Updating beliefs under perceived threat
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- Authors
- Moutsiana, C., Garrett, N., Clarke, R. C., Lotto, R. B., Blakemore, S.-J., & Sharot, T.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2013-09-09
- Volume
- 110
- Issue
- 41
- Pages
- 16396-16401
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC3799330
- OpenAlex
- W2009127026
- Semantic Scholar
- ebf57772503c2f43ad6ef11131bcab331eb110d6
- Cited by
- 119
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 6.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- WestminsterResearch (University of Westminster) (acceptedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- belief updating, age differences, adolescents, risk-taking, estimation error, computational modeling, belief formation
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Age Factors, Child, Decision Making, Humans, Learning, Risk-Taking
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