{"pk":50227,"title":"Rethinking Rumination: A Decision-Theoretic Approach Without Negativity Bias","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Prior work by Bedder et al. (2023, 2024) modeled rumination as a negativity-biased decision process under uncertainty in a POMDP framework, where excessive sampling results from pessimistic priors and uncertainty about negative experiences. While these models provide valuable insight, they assume that excessive information-seeking is driven primarily by negative affect. We explore an alternative hypothesis: excessive information-seeking may result from optimal inference due to uncertainty and planning depth, independent of negativity bias. Using a POMDP solver with recursive value iteration, we find horizon length and uncertainty influence the persistence of sampling actions without a negative reward bias. This shifts rumination from an affect-driven process to a more generalized preoccupation mechanism consistent with the ICD-11's transdiagnostic conceptualization of preoccupation (Eberle & Maercker, 2022). Unlike prior models with fixed stopping thresholds, our approach may allow preoccupation to emerge dynamically from decision parameters without explicit negativity bias.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Mood; Problem Solving; Computational Modeling"}],"section":"Member Abstracts with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36k4b6x9","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Michael","middle_name":"","last_name":"Payton","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"Mary","middle_name":"","last_name":"Vitello","name_suffix":"","institution":"UCLA","department":""},{"first_name":"Joseph","middle_name":"Larry","last_name":"Austerweil","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin - Madison","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50227/galley/38189/download/"}]}