Self-Discrepancy Monitoring and its Impact on Negative Mood: An Experimental Investigation

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1982

This study examined the influence of depressed and elated mood on self-referential memory processes. By means of a hypnotic mood-induction procedure, subjects were made to experience a happy, sad, or neutral state. The study demonstrated that temporary depression caused decreased recall of positive life experiences, weaker memory strength for positive information about oneself, and a bias to recall false negative self-descriptions. Induced elation was associated with decreased recall of negative events and an increased recall of positive events. The results were considered to lend general support for Beck's notion that mood states are associated with distorted information processing about the self. General implications of the findings are discussed. Clinical investigations have increasingly focused on the relationship of cognitive factors to emotional disorders (Abramson, Se

2001

Our review excludes experiments that involve misattiibution of mood states or experiments that manipulate the degree to which participants are aware of their mood states (e.g., Clore, Gaspar, & Garvin, chap. 6, this volume; Smith, chap. 4, this volume; Levine, Wyer, & Schwarz, 1994; Martin, Abend, Sedikides, & Green, 1997). Also, our review excludes experiments in which the moodinduction task was actually a failure or success experience based on task performance feedback (e.g., McFarland & Buehler, 1997, 1998). Address for correspondence: Constantine Sedikides, Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, SOI 7 IBJ Southampton, England, UK. Email: c.sedikides@soton. ac.uk

Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2007

To be considered a vulnerability marker for depression, a variable should, in addition to demonstrating sensitivity and specificity, also show evidence of temporal stability (i.e., remain present in the absence of depressive symptomatology). Although many cognitive factors are associated with depression, the majority of them appear to be episode rather than vulnerability markers. This study examined cognitive organization of positive and negative interpersonal and achievement content in clinically depressed, remitted, and nonpsychiatric controls. At initial assessment, a sample of 54 clinically depressed individuals and 37 never-depressed controls completed self-report measures of positive and negative automatic thoughts and two cognitive organizational tasks. They were retested 6 months later when half of the depressed group no longer met diagnostic criteria for major depression. Negative automatic thoughts decreased and positive automatic thoughts increased significantly in individuals who had improved clinically. The organization of negative interpersonal content remained stable despite symptom amelioration, but negative achievement content was less interconnected at follow-up in those patients who had improved. The structure of relational schemas, in particular, appears to be stable and may be an important cognitive vulnerability factor for depression.

Cognitive Therapy and Research, 2002

This study compared the extent to which negative and positive cognitive errors, dysfunctional attitudes, and self-reported symptoms of depression predicted change in college students' depressed mood and social self-esteem following an experimentally arranged negative social event. The amount of negative cognitive errors, the ratio of negative-to-positive cognitive errors, the amount of dysfunctional attitudes, and the amount of depressive symptoms obtained

Journal of Research in Personality, 1996

This study extends in several ways earlier research showing that a generalized negative view of the self is a distinguishing feature of depression. First, we used a nonclinical sample (N ϭ 124), a stringent test of specificity in view of the high overlap of depressive and anxiety symptoms in such samples. Second, we correlated self-concept with a depressive symptom measure from which overlapping content had been removed. Third, we related self-concept to positive and negative affectivity (PA, NA). Specificity to depression suggests that low self-concept should be associated with low PA, whereas its inclusion in the proposed criteria for mixed anxietydepression implied that low self-esteem should be linked especially to high NA. Results indicate that self-esteem was (a) inversely correlated with depressive symptoms, (b) specific to depressive symptoms, and (c) correlated more highly with PA than with NA.

Personality and Individual Differences, 2019

Actual-ideal and actual-ought self-discrepancies have been theorised to be independently associated with depressive and anxious symptoms respectively. This study tested this prediction and extended it to consider whether rumination mediates these relationships. One hundred and thirty-eight students (48 males, 90 females) listed four adjectives describing how they would ideally hope to be and four adjectives describing how they ought to be. Participants then rated how distant they perceived themselves to be from each of their ideal and ought selves, as well as the importance of each ideal and ought self. Finally, participants self-reported levels of negative rumination, anxious and depressive symptoms. Actual-ideal self-discrepancy was independently associated with both anxious and depressive symptoms, whereas actual-ought self-discrepancy was independently associated with anxious symptoms only. Rumination mediated the independent relationships between actual-ideal selfdiscrepancy and anxious and depressive symptoms. Actual-ought self-discrepancy retained an independent association with anxious symptoms that was not mediated through rumination. Anxious and depressive symptoms both have independent associations with actual-ideal selfdiscrepancies, whereas anxious symptoms are uniquely associated with actual-ought selfdiscrepancies. We reveal further evidence for rumination as a cognitive-motivational transdiagnostic process linking self-regulatory difficulties with anxious and depressive symptoms.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2009

Previous research has demonstrated that induced sad mood is associated with increased accuracy of recall in certain memory tasks; the effects of clinical depression, however, are likely to be quite different. The authors used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm to examine the impact of clinical depression on erroneous recall of neutral and/or emotional stimuli. Specifically, they presented Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists that were highly associated with negative, neutral, or positive lures and compared participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and nondepressed control participants on the accuracy of their recall of presented material and their false recall of never-presented lures. Compared with control participants, major depressive disorder participants recalled fewer words that had been previously presented but were more likely to falsely recall negative lures; there were no differences between major depressive disorder and control participants in false recall of positive or neutral lures. These findings indicate that depression is associated with false memories of negative material.

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 2014

Background and objectives: Cognitive models propose that depression is caused by dysfunctional schemas that endure beyond the depressive episode, representing vulnerability factors for recurrence. However, research testing negative cognitions linked to dysfunctional schemas in formerly depressed individuals is still scarce. Furthermore, negative cognitions are presumed to be linked to biases in recalling negative self-referent information in formerly depressed individuals, but no studies have directly tested this association. In the present study, we evaluated differences between formerly and never-depressed individuals in several experimental indices of negative cognitions and their associations with the recall of emotional self-referent material. Methods: Formerly (n ¼ 30) and never depressed individuals (n ¼ 40) completed measures of explicit (i.e., scrambled sentence test) and automatic (i.e., lexical decision task) processing to evaluate negative cognitions. Furthermore participants completed a self-referent incidental recall task to evaluate memory biases. Results: Formerly compared to never depressed individuals showed greater negative cognitions at both explicit and automatic levels of processing. Results also showed greater recall of negative self-referent information in formerly compared to never-depressed individuals. Finally, individual differences in negative cognitions at both explicit and automatic levels of processing predicted greater recall of negative self-referent material in formerly depressed individuals. Limitations: Analyses of the relationship between explicit and automatic processing indices and memory biases were correlational and the majority of participants in both groups were women. Conclusions: Our findings provide evidence of negative cognitions in formerly depressed individuals at both automatic and explicit levels of processing that may confer a cognitive vulnerability to depression.

Journal of Abnormal …, 1996

Do clinically depressed individuals seek favorable or unfavorable information about the self? Self-verification theory makes the counterintuitive prediction that depressed individuals solicit feedback that confirms their negative self-views. To test this prediction, participants were ...

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 2016

Background and Objectives-Humans have the dual capacity to assign a slightly pleasant valence to neutral stimuli (the positivity offset) to encourage approach behaviors, as well as to assign a higher negative valence to unpleasant images relative to the positive valence to equally arousing and extreme pleasant images (the negativity bias) to facilitate defensive strategies. We conducted an experimental psychopathology study to examine the extent to which the negativity bias and the positivity offset differ in participants with and without major depression. Method-Forty-one depressed and thirty-six healthy participants were evaluated using a structured clinical interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders, questionnaires, and a computerized task designed to measure implicit affective responses to unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant stimuli. Results-The negativity bias was significantly higher and the positivity offset was significantly lower in depressed relative to healthy participants. Limitations-Entry criteria enrolling medication-free participants with minimal DSM-IV comorbidity may limit generalizability of the findings.