Abstract
Although the link between stressful experiences and depression has been supported in numerous studies, the specific mechanisms of this relationship are still unclear. Cognitive theories of depression postulate that the influence of stress on depression may be modified by cognitive factors. The aim of the present study was to examine the interplay between negative life events, cognitive vulnerability factors, and depressive symptoms. It was hypothesized that the relationship between negative life events and symptoms of depression is shaped by rumination and cognitive biases. The study sample consisted of 108 young adults (19 men and 89 women; M = 20.31; SD = 1.84). Memory bias and attentional bias were assessed using the Attentional Blink Task and the Memory Task, respectively. Rumination and depressive symptoms were assessed via self-report questionnaires. Logistic regression and moderation analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between the study variables. Stressful life events, rumination and memory bias were found to be significantly related to depressive symptoms. Moderation analyses revealed that there is a positive relationship between negative life events and depressive symptoms but only among individuals characterized by an elevated level of rumination and among participants exhibiting negative attentional bias. The results provide further evidence for cognitive models of depression.
Highlights
Psychological factors that are considered to be risk factors for depression are negative experiences associated with stressful life events, the individual tendency to ruminate, and other cognitive vulnerability factors such as irrational beliefs, maladaptive schemas, or cognitive biases
The Shapiro–Wilk test showed that among the study variables, the rumination scale and the indicator variable of attentional bias were normally distributed in the study sample (p > 0.05), whereas other measured variables significantly deviated from the norm
When the general model with all the predictors was tested, the results indicated that stressful life events together with individual tendency to ruminate and negative memory bias were significantly related to depressive symptoms in young adults
Summary
Psychological factors that are considered to be risk factors for depression are negative experiences associated with stressful life events, the individual tendency to ruminate, and other cognitive vulnerability factors such as irrational beliefs, maladaptive schemas, or cognitive biases. Numerous studies (e.g., Brown and Harris, 1986; Post, 1992; Williams et al, 1997; Thomsen, 2006; NolenHoeksema et al, 2007; Riggs and Han, 2009; Marks et al, 2010; Eberhart et al, 2011; Kircanski et al, 2012) have shown that these factors play an important role in the development of depression symptoms. In many research dating back to the 1980s (Brown and Harris, 1986; Riggs and Han, 2009; Marks et al, 2010; Eberhart et al, 2011), the occurrence of depressive symptoms in the non-clinical population was found to be related to stressful experiences. The results of recent studies have suggested that rumination may interact with stress and increase depression symptoms (Skitch and Abela, 2008; Abela and Hankin, 2011; Bastin et al, 2015; Hamlat et al, 2015; Padilla Paredes and Calvete Zumalde, 2015; Connolly and Alloy, 2017; Shapero et al, 2017)
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