Societal uncertainty impacts responses to emotional ambiguity: Increasing negative bias during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our work leverages emotional ambiguity to explore individual differences in valence bias the tendency to perceive ambiguity as having a positive or negative meaning. This bias became more negative at the onset of the pandemic, and has continued to increase in negativity to date. These results highlight the need to identify resilience factors against sequelae of large-scale societal uncertainty.