Implicit theories and depression in clinical and non-clinical samples: The mediating role of experiential avoidance

Abstract

Implicit theories refer to people’s beliefs about the malleability of personal attributes. Although previous studies have found that those who believe that their attributes are fixed (i.e., entity theorists) tend to be more depressed than those who do not (i.e., incremental theorists), the underlying mechanism is yet to be fully understood. In the present study, we examined experiential avoidance as a potential mediator of this association in both clinical and non-clinical samples. Patients with depressive disorder (N = 100) and a non-clinical community sample of adults (N = 100) completed measures of implicit theories about anxiety, emotion, and personality, as well as measures of experiential avoidance and depression. The results indicated that experiential avoidance mediated the association between implicit theories in the three domains and depression in both patient and community samples. We replicated previous findings of the positive association between an entity theory and depression in understudied samples, and identified experiential avoidance as a mediator regardless of the severity of the depression.