Nondepressed College Students Research Articles

When misery prefers company: Depression, attributions, and responses to others' moods

The present study examined the notion that depressed individuals prefer unhappy people but that this preference depends on the perception that others are not responsible for their own unhappiness. To test this prediction depressed and nondepressed college students were given information about others that indicated they were either happy or unhappy and that they were either responsible or not for their emotional state. The results indicate that whereas information about blameless, unhappy others led to an improvement in depressed subjects' moods, information about deservedly happy individuals led to a worsening of their moods. In contrast, nondepressed subjects' moods generally worsened following information about unhappy others. Depressed subjects preferred most to meet blameless, unhappy individuals, whereas nondepressed subjects most preferred to meet lucky, happy people. The interpersonal implications are discussed.

Processing of ambiguous and unambiguous feedback by depressed and nondepressed college students: schematic biases and their implications for depressive realism.

Explored schematic processing as a mechanism for predicting (a) when depressed Ss would be negative relative to nondepressed Ss and (b) when depressed and nondepressed Ss would show biased or unbiased (i.e., "realistic") processing. Depressed and nondepressed Ss performed multiple trials of a task under conditions in which the two groups held either equivalent or different schemas regarding this task. Ss received either an unambiguous or objectively normed ambiguous feedback cue on each trial. In full support of schematic processing, depressed Ss showed negative encoding relative to nondepressed Ss only when their schemas were more negative, and both depressed and nondepressed Ss showed positively biased, negatively biased, and unbiased encoding depending on the relative feedback cue-to-schema match. Depressed and nondepressed Ss' response latencies to unambiguous feedback also supported the occurrence of schematic processing. We discuss the methodological, treatment, and "realism" implications of these findings and suggest a more precise formulation of Beck's schema theory of depression.

Processing of ambiguous and unambiguous feedback by depressed and nondepressed college students: Schematic biases and their implications for depressive realism.

Processing of ambiguous and unambiguous feedback by depressed and nondepressed college students: Schematic biases and their implications for depressive realism.

Depression and the Self-Serving Search for Consensus After Success and Failure

The information-seeking tendencies of depressed and nondepressed college students were assessed in an experiment in which subjects were induced either to succeed or fail a supposedly well-respected test of social sensitivity, and then led to expect that the available information would show that most other subjects performed either well or poorly on the test. Consistent with previous research, nondepressed subjects exhibited biased search tendencies after failure but not after success; that is, nondepressed failure subjects sought more information when they expected it to provide high consensus for their failure than when they expected it to provide low consensus. Depressed subjects exhibited no such bias after failure, but did exhibit biased search after success, seeking more information when they expected it to provide low consensus for their success than when they expected it to provide high consensus. The implications of these findings for understanding the differential attributional tendencies of depressed and nondepressed persons were discussed.

The Anticipation of Immediate Versus Final Consequences of Positive, Negative, and Ambiguous Life Events in Depressed and Nondepressed College Students

College students, categorized either depressed or nondepressed based on Beck Depression Inventory scores, served as subjects in this research. Their anticipation of immediate versus final consequences of positive, negative, and ambiguous life events was assessed. They were asked to write out what they believed would be the immediate and final consequences of specific life events. Events were defined as positive, negative, and ambiguous with subtype categories of affiliation and achievement. Subjects were then asked to rate the impact intensity on their lives of each anticipated consequence. The results indicate that depressive college students expect greater erosion over time of the impact of positive events than do nondepressives.

Interactions of depressed college students with their roommates: not necessarily negative.

Coyne's (1976b) interactional theory of the social environment's role in maintaining depression suggests that depressed people create negative affect in others. This leads to a pattern of interactions between depressed individuals and others that is aversive to both parties and becomes a vicious circle. We examined interactions of 15 depressed and 15 nondepressed college students with their roommates. On questionnaires, roommates did indicate more rejection, dislike, and avoidance of the depressed students than of the nondepressed students, consistent with Coyne's theory, and depressed-student-roommate interactions were more personally involved (higher percentage of self-disclosure) and less positive than nondepressed-student-roommate interactions. The moods of both depressed students and their roommates were worse than those of controls before the interaction but, contrary to expectation, improved over the course of the interaction, whereas the moods of nondepressed students and their roommates did not change significantly. Implications of these results for Coyne's theory are discussed.

Mild depression and self-disclosure intimacy: Self and others' perceptions

A study was conducted to examine the nature and intimacy of self-disclosures made by mildly depressed and nondepressed college students. Written statements about positive and negative topics were elicited from students, and the statements were evaluated as to tone and intimacy, first by the subjects themselves and then by a group of raters. Results indicated that the statements of the mildly depressed subjects were more negative in tone and more intimate than were those of the nondepressed subjects, but only in the negative topic condition. In general, subjects' self-evaluations of their statements were consistent with those of the raters, suggesting that they were aware of the intimacy of their disclosures. In addition, correlational analyses indicated that mood states were positively related to statement intimacy for the nondepressed subjects, but negatively related for the mildly depressed subjects. Results are discussed in terms of the relation involving self-disclosure styles, social interaction, and depression.

Children's depressive symptoms, negative self-statements, and causal attributions for success and failure

On the basis of the reformulated model of learned helplessness, we tested relationships among level of depression, negative self-statements, causal attributions for success and failure, and mood states among schoolchildren. The experimental manipulation of success and failure on an anagram task was an extension of previous work with depressed and nondepressed college students. Results showed, first, that depressive symptoms were related to impaired performance. Second, there were no significantly different responses to success and failure by children with depressive symptoms versus those without such symptoms. Neither causal attributions, self-statements, nor postanagram mood was affected by the presence of depressive symptoms, regardless of whether the child succeeded or failed. On the other hand, across conditions, subjects responded differentially to success and failure. Those in the success condition attributed their performance more to ability and luck and less to task difficulty than did those in the failure condition. Additionally, successful subjects reported a more elevated mood than did unsuccessful subjects. Future research is suggested, based on these results and the different patterns of correlations that emerged among negative self-statements, causal attributions, and mood for successful and unsuccessful subjects.

Decision style in depression: The contribution of perceived risks versus benefits.

The present study investigated the contribution of cognitive and social factors to the decision style of depressed persons. During two sessions (Times 1 and 2), depressed and nondepressed college students were asked to imagine themselves making decisions about common life situations that afforded potential benefits but that also entailed potential risks. The decision scenarios varied in content; for example, some focused on decisions about establishing social contact and intimacy, whereas others focused on asserting one's rights or reporting a moral transgression. For each situation, subjects evaluated several potential risks and benefits and indicated what decisions they would make. In both sessions and for all types of decision scenarios, the depressed assigned greater weight to risks than did the nondepressed. Furthermore, for decisions about initiating social contact and establishing intimacy, the depressed expressed a greater reluctance to take the target action than did the nondepressed, and their perceptions of risks appeared to influence their estimated decisions more strongly. The Time 2 study also revealed that most of these differences applied equally when individuals were thinking about themselves or another person. However, risk perceptions were found to contribute more to the decision style of the depressed, relative to the nondepressed, only when their thoughts were focused on themselves and not when their thoughts were focused on another person. This work suggests that depressives' cognitive analysis of common life situations leads them to make decisions that promote their social isolation and, thereby, perpetuate their depression. Several theoretical explanations for the results are discussed.

Social comparison and depression: company's effect on misery.

In this article, two studies examine the social comparison processes of depressed and nondepressed college students. In the first study, subjects' preferences for information from others were assessed after they had received a manipulation intended to improve or worsen their mood states. The responses of the depressed subjects provided evidence of downward comparison, as they indicated a preference for information from people who were experiencing negative affect--but only when they themselves were also experiencing relatively negative affect, and not when their moods had been temporarily improved. In the second study, subjects' moods were assessed before and after they had received information indicating another person was currently experiencing very negative affect. This information had little effect on the nondepressed subjects, however, the mood states of the depressed persons improved after they read the information. In general, the results indicate that realizing that others are doing worse may help depressed persons to feel somewhat better.

The influence of depression on the attribution of responsibility for an accident

The role of depression in the attribution of responsibility for an accident was examined. Mildly depressed, slightly depressed, and nondepressed college students were presented with accident descriptions in which the victims suffered either nonsevere or severe consequences. Nondepressed subjects attributed more responsibility for the accident to uncontrollable factors in the nonsevere than in the severe accident condition, thus replicating the defensive attribution effect. Slightly depressed subjects showed no difference in attributions across severity conditions. Mildly depressed subjects showed a nonsignificant tendency (p < .10) to attribute more responsibility to uncontrollable factors in the severe than in the nonsevere condition. The findings are consistent with earlier research suggesting that depressed and nondepressed individuals differ in their tendencies to distort attributions.

Depression and affective meaning for current concerns

Recent inquiries into the etiology and maintenance of depression have had a strong cognitive emphasis. However, relatively less attention has been paid to the connotative significance of depressive experience. In particular, there is much to be learned about the depressed person's emotional response to the incentives in his life. In the present study, moderately to severely depressed and nondepressed college students were asked to provide a list of “current concerns,” which they subsequently ranked in terms of order of importance. Each subject's five most important concerns served as target stimuli for a semantic differential analysis. The results indicated that, relative to nondepressed students, depressed subjects viewed their concerns in a less positive and less active light. The groups did not differ in their ratings of the potency of their concerns, with both groups tending to perceive their concerns as highly potent. A second purpose of the study was to examine whether the groups differed in the number or type of current concerns. Depressed students reported a greater number of concerns. In comparing the groups with respect to the number of concerns mentioned within each of 16 categories, it was found that depressed subjects reported more concerns than nondepressed subjects in the areas of love and sex, employment and money, and mental health.

Self-Other Attribution of Responsibility for Outcome by Depressed and Nondepressed College Students in Problem-Solving Dyads

The attribution of responsibility for outcome in problem-solving dyads by depressed and nondepressed college students as a function of experimentally manipulated outcome and control was assessed. Subjects played the game “Password,” in which they gave one-word clues to a partner (a confederate), who guessed what the target words were. Control was manipulated by having subjects formulate their own clues or use prescribed clues. Outcome was manipulated by having the confederate answer either 80% or 20% correctly. Each subject was then asked to rate the quality of his or her own and the partner's performance, and to rate the relative importance of self and partner in determining the outcome of the game. Results showed that depressives' ratings apparently conformed more realistically to the dictates of the experimental manipulations than did the nondepressives' ratings The results further suggested that nondepressed subjects may engage in self-enhancing distortions in their attributions of responsibility for success.

Comparing the self with others in depressed and nondepressed college students: Reply to McCauley.

Comparing the self with others in depressed and nondepressed college students: Reply to McCauley.

The Influence of Affect on Self-Perception in Depression

This study examined the role of affect in the organization of self-relevant thoughts in depression. Depressed and nondepressed college students described themselves by selecting adjectives and organizing these adjectives into categories that represented different aspects of themselves. Individuals also supplied a label to describe the general content or meaning of each category. Each label was coded for whether it expressed predominantly an affective, good-bad theme or themes that reflected more than a simple affective distinction (e.g., social themes). As predicted, the depressed were more likely than the nondepressed to use category labels in which the salient feature was negative or positive affect (e.g., “my bad traits” or “my good traits”) and less likely to use category labels that incorporated additional information (e.g., “how I act with others,” “myself as a student”). These results suggest that the depressed are particularly sensitive to the affective nature of their thoughts and behavior, and that they may develop a self-structure in which affect is a central organizing factor. It is also proposed that the affect associated with self-relevant stimuli acquires special significance in depression because it can give the depressed critical information for resolving or understanding the marked discrepancy between their actual feelings about themselves and how they would like to feel. Several alternative ways in which affect may influence cognition in depression are discussed.

Contingency judgments by depressed college students: sadder but not always wiser.

We examined depressed and nondepressed college students' perceptions of control over outcomes in a task similar to the one introduced by Alloy and Abramson (1979, Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, when subjects completed a contingency learning task with no one else present, nondepressed subjects perceived themselves to have more control over frequently occurring response-independent outcomes than did depressed subjects, which replicated Alloy and Abramson's finding. When subjects completed the task in the presence of an observer, depressed students perceived themselves to have more control than did nondepressed students. In Experiment 2, the observer effects found in Experiment 1 were replicated, and we extended those results by showing that when response-independent outcomes occurred relatively infrequently, depressed and nondepressed subjects who completed the task in the presence of an observer did not reliably differ in their estimates of personal control. In Experiment 3, which included minor procedural variations from the other experiments, the pattern of results found in Experiments 1 and 2 was replicated under conditions in which observers were present while subjects received frequently occurring outcomes. Together, the results of the three experiments demonstrate that the consistently accurate personal control estimates of depressed subjects that have been found across a variety of situations break down when subjects complete a contingency learning task in the presence of an observer, and outcomes occur independently of response at a high frequency.

Contingency judgments by depressed college students: Sadder but not always wiser.

We examined depressed and nondepressed college students' perceptions of control over outcomes in a task similar to the one introduced by Alloy and Abramson (1979, Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, when subjects completed a contingency learning task with no one else present, nondepressed subjects perceived themselves to have more control over frequently occurring response-independent outcomes than did depressed subjects, which replicated Alloy and Abramson's finding. When subjects completed the task in the presence of an observer, depressed students perceived themselves to have more control than did nondepressed students. In Experiment 2, the observer effects found in Experiment 1 were replicated, and we extended those results by showing that when response-independent outcomes occurred relatively infrequently, depressed and nondepressed subjects who completed the task in the presence of an observer did not reliably differ in their estimates of personal control. In Experiment 3, which included minor procedural variations from the other experiments, the pattern of results found in Experiments 1 and 2 was replicated under conditions in which observers were present while subjects received frequently occurring outcomes. Together, the results of the three experiments demonstrate that the consistently accurate personal control estimates of depressed subjects that have been found across a variety of situations break down when subjects complete a contingency learning task in the presence of an observer, and outcomes occur independently of response at a high frequency.

Comparing the self with others in depressed and nondepressed college students: Reply to McCauley.

Comparing the self with others in depressed and nondepressed college students: Reply to McCauley.

Depression and preference for self-focusing stimuli after success and failure.

Depressed individuals, who tend to have large perceived-self/ideal-self discrepancies, have been shown to be particularly high in private self-consciousness. On the bases of this finding and of several converging theoretical perspectives, we hypothesized that depressives, unlike nondepressives, do not find self-focus more aversive after failure than after success, and thus either (a) show no differential preference for self-focusing stimuli after success versus after failure (weak hypothesis), or (b) prefer self-focusing stimuli after failure over self-focusing stimuli after success (strong hypothesis). Depressed and nondepressed college students succeeded or failed on a supposed test of verbal intelligence, and then worked on two sets of puzzles, one in the presence and one in the absence of a self-focusing stimulus (mirror). Whereas nondepressed subjects liked the mirror-associated puzzle more after success than after failure, depressed subjects did not; depressed subjects tended to like the mirror-associated puzzle more after failure than after success. Nondepressed subjects also exhibited a self-serving pattern of attributions, viewing the test as less valid and luck as more responsible for their performance after failure than after success; depressed subjects showed no such differences. In consistency with their failure to use defensive strategies, depressed subjects showed a decrease in self-esteem after failure; nondepressed subjects showed no such change.

Depression and preference for self-focusing stimuli after success and failure.

Depressed individuals, who tend to have large perceived-self/ideal-self discrepancies, have been shown to be particularly high in private self-consciousness. On the bases of this finding and of several converging theoretical perspectives, we hypothesized that depressives, unlike nondepressives, do not find self-focus more aversive after failure than after success, and thus either (a) show no differential preference for self-focusing stimuli after success versus after failure (weak hypothesis), or (b) prefer self-focusing stimuli after failure over self-focusing stimuli after success (strong hypothesis). Depressed and nondepressed college students succeeded or failed on a supposed test of verbal intelligence, and then worked on two sets of puzzles, one in the presence and one in the absence of a self-focusing stimulus (mirror). Whereas nondepressed subjects liked the mirror-associated puzzle more after success than after failure, depressed subjects did not; depressed subjects tended to like the mirror-associated puzzle more after failure than after success. Nondepressed subjects also exhibited a self-serving pattern of attributions, viewing the test as less valid and luck as more responsible for their performance after failure than after success; depressed subjects showed no such differences. In consistency with their failure to use defensive strategies, depressed subjects showed a decrease in self-esteem after failure; nondepressed subjects showed no such change.