An Active Inference Model of the Optimism Bias

all right hello and welcome it is June 27th Z UTC 2024 and we are in active inference model stream number 12.1 with Beth fiser and yaka howi so we will have a presentation and a discussion on an active inference model of the optimism bias so thank you both for joining and Beth to you for the presentation great thanks Daniel um yep so I'm Beth and I'm going to talk about work we've just put out as a pre-print and active inference model of the optimism bias and this is work we've done along with Chris White who I think a lot of you will already know or read some of his work and yeah we're here in Australia at the Mones Center for Consciousness and contemplative studies and this is part of my PhD project so I'm doing my PhD with yako so what I'll do is I'll first of all give a bit of of an overview of what the optimism bias is and why this is interesting to study why I'm interested in it I'm then going to talk a bit about um the field of computational Psychiatry so I'm using active inference not so much in a way to like to understand the nitty R of active inference but more as an application as a tool in computational Psychiatry so I thought it would be helpful to explain how we can use these models in in these kinds of settings and and the purpose of why I'm using these models then I'll go through the simulations uh that we have in the paper and then just some conclusions so the optimism bias is a cognitive bias where our expectations are better than reality and what's interesting about the optimism bias is that you might think in order to make the best decisions in life and have the best life outcomes you should represent information as it is in reality and not have expectations that are better than reality but the optimism bias shows us that if we think things are better than they are and overestimate the likelihood of good things happening we have all these better life outcomes so people who are optimistic have a lower risk of all CA ality and reduce risk of cardiovascular disease they have decreased fatigue and chronic illness and they engage in more self-care behaviors there's even this really cool study that showed that people who are optimistic had improv cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury um optimists they just earn more money they have better immune systems and they just have less anxiety and worry um overall so why would it be that being optimistic and thinking things are better than they are leads to all the these positive things so to explain that I'm going to go through an example so imagine here you're someone who holds the reality beliefs so in reality it's true that 50% of marriages end in divorce if you work out you reduce your risk of heart disease by 14% And if you eat well you reduce your risk of cancer by 10% but then imagine that you're someone who's optimistic so if you're optimistic you might think no only 10% of marriages and in divorce if I uh work out I'll reduce my risk of heart disease by 40% and if I eat well I'll reduce my risk of cancer by 30% so if we hold these optimistic beliefs we're going to be way more likely to do these things so we'll be more likely to eat well we're going to be more likely to work out we're going to be more likely to go out there with the hope of finding a partner and although not everything will work out for you because the reality statistics are there on the left by going out and engaging in more activities and things in life we we increase our chances of some things working up it's like the idea of minimizing the risk of missed opportunity if I do go out there and work out and go to parties and eat well and all these things I'm going to have more likely chance of some of them working out than if I just stay at home and don't do anything so being optimistic increases our engagement in the world and this overall is a positive thing that can lead to all these health benefits so if optimism is really good for all these things what is the connection…