Negativity Unveiled: Exploring Negative Valence Bias Across Psychopathologies

Abstract

Negative valence bias is a common symptom of internalizing and externalizing disorders, leading to a clinical purpose to tailor treatments to improve for this reaction. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of negative valence bias in ambiguous situations with externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms, and neuroticism traits. From the literature, a research question arises of if Neuroticism explains why there is a negative valence bias in both externalizing and internalizing disorders. In this, using multiple regression, it was hypothesized that (i) internalizing and externalizing symptoms would both predict negative valence bias, but (ii) these relationships would be rendered non-significant when Neuroticism was controlled for. 150 participants were taken from an online recruitment service. First, the participants provided valence ratings for 90 vignettes in three categories (positive, negative, and neutral). Then, participants took ten questionnaires to compute scores for internalizing and externalizing disorder symptoms and neuroticism traits. Analysis was done and found that neuroticism score was not a significant predictor of valence ratings. However, it was found that internalizing disorder symptoms were a significant predictor of more negative valence ratings in the positive question dataset. From this, it was then discussed that internalizing disorders display a negative valence bias in positive situations, a novel finding. If future studies were able to find more evidence for this finding, treatments could be tailored to help individuals with internalizing disorders create better responses to positive situations, leading to a more positive outlook on life. Keywords: Valence, Negativity Bias, Externalizing disorder, Internalizing disorder, Neuroticism, Anger