Visualizing one's Best Possible Self increases positive future expectancies, but does not boost selective learning in fibromyalgia Kloos, Tabea Blanco Bregón, Fernando Rief, Winfried Meulders, Ann Riecke, Jenny Resilience positive affect Optimism Selective learning Blocking Compromised learning is considered to contribute importantly to the development and maintenance of chronic pain disability. More specifically, predictive learning is impaired in people with chronic pain. Therefore, learning mechanisms have been identified as treatment targets. A widely neglected, but relevant question is whether resilience factors can enhance selective learning. This online study combined a selective learning task with a positive psychology intervention in participants with fibromyalgia (FM). The Best Possible Self group (BPS) described and visualized a future in which everything had gone well, which is shown to increase optimism and positive affect, while the active control group described and visualized their Typical Day (TD). Subsequently, selective learning was tested within a contingency learning scenario task using a blocking procedure and pain expectancies as main outcome. We successfully manipulated positive future expectancies (a proxy for state optimism), but not positive affect within a single-session intervention. In contrast with our expectations, the positive psychology intervention did not increase selective learning in the BPS group compared to the TD group, but a small blocking effect was observed in the merged sample. However, because no healthy control group was included, no conclusions can be drawn as to whether the selective learning effect is reduced compared to a non-clinical population. To conclude, there was partial evidence for selective learning in people with fibromyalgia, but manipulated resilience factors did not modulate the selective learning effect. 2025-06-13T11:14:39Z 2025-06-13T11:14:39Z 2025-04-16 journal article abea Kloos, Fernando Blanco, Winfried Rief, Ann Meulders, Jenny Riecke, Visualizing one's Best Possible Self increases positive future expectancies, but does not boost selective learning in fibromyalgia, Behaviour Research and Therapy, Volume 190, 2025, 104748, ISSN 0005-7967, [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2025.104748] 0005-7967 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/104649 10.1016/j.brat.2025.104748 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Elsevier