When asked to evaluate their probability of experiencing a negative life event, healthy
individuals update their beliefs more following good news than bad. This is referred to as …

People usually update their beliefs selectively in response to good news and disregard bad
news. Here, we investigated in two preregistered experiments (N= 278 and N= 306)(1) …

In a recent paper, Burton et al. claim that individuals update beliefs to a greater extent when
learning an event is less likely compared to more likely than expected. Here, we investigate …

Selectively integrating new information contributes to belief polarization and compromises
public discourse. To better understand factors that underlie biased belief updating, I …

Background: Negative social expectations are a key symptom of depression. These
expectations may persist by cognitively devaluing new experiences that do not fit prior …

What explains variation in how officials use intelligence analysis? How can one official
acting on one issue within one bureaucratic and political reality seem alternately to use …

Background When forecasting the future, people often underestimate the likelihood of
adverse life events, a phenomenon known as optimism bias. While transcranial alternating …

People have limited introspective access to many mental processes. In this dissertation, I
test whether people can report self-awareness of motivational influences. Specifically, I …