Letting Go of the Negative, Holding on to the Positive? Within-Person Trajectories of Affective Habituation to Negative and Positive Stimuli.

Abstract

The differential affective habituation hypothesis argues that affective reactions decrease faster for positive than for negative information due to the greater evolutionary importance of threat over reward. However, limited evidence and low-powered studies hinder strong conclusions about this hypothesis from the extant literature, a gap the present research aimed to address. Because anxiety entails heightened threat anticipation, a second aim was to examine if higher anxiety intensifies this differential habituation pattern (i.e., anxiety potentiation hypothesis). Two experiments (N₁ = 104, N₂ = 211) provided within-subject exposure to International Affective Picture System (IAPS) images, manipulated stimulus valence, and assessed anxiety at baseline (Studies 1 and 2) or following an anxiety manipulation (Study 2). Results supported both hypotheses, highlighting the importance of examining positive habituation as a key mechanism in psychological functioning and suggesting that, despite its potential survival function, differential habituation may carry psychological costs.