Positive future thinking without task-relevance increases anxiety and frontal stress regulation

Negative anticipatory biases can affect the way we interpret and subjectively experience events. Through its role in emotion regulation, positive future thinking may provide an accessible way to attenuate these biases. However, it is unclear whether positive future thinking works ubiquitously, independent of contextual relevance. Here, we used a positive future thinking intervention (task-relevant; task-irrelevant and control condition) prior to a social stress task to adapt the way this task was experienced. We assessed subjective and objective stress measures and also recorded resting state electroencephalography (EEG) to assess intervention related differences in the level of frontal delta-beta coupling, which is considered a neurobiological substrate of stress regulation. Results show that the intervention reduced subjective stress and anxiety, and increased social fixation behavior and task performance, but only if future thinking was task-relevant. Paradoxically, task-irrelevant positive future thoughts enhanced negative perceptual biases and stress reactivity. This increase in stress reactivity was corroborated by elevated levels of frontal delta-beta coupling during event anticipation, which suggests an increased demand for stress regulation. Together, these findings show that positive future thinking can mitigate the negative emotional, behavioral and neurobiological consequences of a stressful event, but that it should not be applied indiscriminately. •Positive future thinking can help reduce social stress and boost task performance.•But positivity without task relevance paradoxically increases stress reactivity.•Frontal delta-beta coupling may work as an adaptive stress regulation mechanism.•The engagement of this system appears to be state and trait dependent.