Human bias for happy endings stems from activity in the brain’s reward system, accordingly to results reported October 19 in Journal of Neuroscience.
Researchers scanned the brains of 27 men while they watched a screen showing virtual coins falling into two pots. The bigger the coin’s size, the higher its value. Larger and larger coins fell into one pot, while the coins falling into the other pot started out large and then got smaller. People who correctly guessed which pot contained the most money had more activity in the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in each hemisphere that processes emotion. Greater activation in an area called the anterior insula predicted incorrect choices: people picked the pots that seemed to hold more money simply because bigger and bigger coins fell into them. In other words, the happy ending bias overrode an accurate calculation of the pot’s value.
More at
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/46/8938
