Depression and emotional reactivity: variation among Asian Americans of East Asian descent and European Americans

Studies of Western samples (e.g., European Americans [EAs]) suggest that depressed individuals tend to show diminished emotional reactivity (J. G. Gehricke & A. J. Fridlund, 2002; G. E. Schwartz, P. L. Fair, P. Salt, M. R. Mandel, & G. L. Klerman, 1976a, 1976b). Do these findings generalize to individuals oriented to other cultures (e.g., East Asian cultures)? The authors compared the emotional reactions (i.e., reports of emotional experience, facial behavior, and physiological reactivity) of depressed and nondepressed EAs and Asian Americans of East Asian descent (AAs) to sad and amusing films. Their results were consistent with previous findings: Depressed EAs showed a pattern of diminished reactivity to the sad film (less crying, less intense reports of sadness) compared with nondepressed participants. In contrast, depressed AAs showed a pattern of heightened emotional reactivity (greater crying) compared with nondepressed participants. Across cultural groups, depressed and nondepressed participants did not differ in their reports of amusement or facial behavior during the amusing film. Physiological reactivity to the film clips did not differ between depressed and control participants for either cultural group. Thus, although depression may influence particular aspects of emotional reactivity across cultures (e.g., crying), the specific direction of this influence may depend on prevailing cultural norms regarding emotional expression.     

The effects of depression on the emotional responses of Spanish-speaking Latinas

Emotional responses (physiology, self-report, and facial expression) of 12 depressed and 10 nondepressed Spanish-speaking Latinas during sad and amusing film clips of human and animal content were compared. Depressed Latinas demonstrated less electrodermal reactivity across all the film clips and displayed fewer social smiles during the amusing-human film clip than nondepressed Latinas. No differences emerged for cardiovascular measures, reports of emotion, or facial expressions of happiness and negative emotion. Observed differences in electrodermal reactivity are similar to results from previous studies of Anglo Americans, suggesting that reduced electrodermal activity may be linked to depression across cultures. The findings also suggest that, for Latinas, depression may selectively alter expressions that serve interpersonal functions.     

Emotion context insensitivity in major depressive disorder

The present study tested 3 competing views of how depression alters emotional reactivity: positive attenuation (reduced positive), negative potentiation (increased negative), and emotion context insensitivity (ECI; reduced positive and negative). Normative and idiographic stimuli that elicited happy, sad, and neutral states were presented to currently depressed, formerly depressed, and healthy control individuals while experiential, behavioral, and autonomic responses were measured. Currently depressed individuals reported less sadness reactivity and less happiness experience across all conditions than did the other participants, and they exhibited a more dysphoric response to idiographic than to normative stimuli. Overall, data provide partial support for the positive attenuation and ECI views. Depression may produce mood-state-dependent changes in emotional reactivity that are most pronounced in emotion experience reports.     

Crying threshold and intensity in major depressive disorder

Clinical lore suggests that depression is associated with frequent and intense crying. To test these postulations empirically, a standardized cry-evoking stimulus was presented to depressed and nondepressed participants, and their likelihood of crying and the magnitude of crying-related changes in their emotion experience, behavior, and autonomic physiology were compared. Unexpectedly, crying was no more likely in depressed than in nondepressed participants. Within the nondepressed group, participants who cried exhibited increases in the report and display of sadness and had greater cardiac and electrodermal activation than did participants who did not cry. There was less evidence of this crying-related emotional activation within the depressed group. The lack of emotional activation among clinically depressed participants who cried provides a tantalizing clue concerning how emotions are dysregulated in this disorder.     

Behavioral activation and inhibition systems and the severity and course of depression

Theorists have proposed that depression is associated with abnormalities in the behavioral activation (BAS) and behavioral inhibition (BIS) systems. In particular, depressed individuals are hypothesized to exhibit deficient BAS and overactive BIS functioning. Self-reported levels of BAS and BIS were examined in 62 depressed participants and 27 nondepressed controls. Clinical functioning was assessed at intake and at 8-month follow-up. Relative to nondepressed controls, depressed participants reported lower BAS levels and higher BIS levels. Within the depressed group, lower BAS levels were associated with greater concurrent depression severity and predicted worse 8-month outcome. Levels of both BIS and BAS showed considerable stability over time and clinical state. Overall, results suggest that BAS dysregulation exacerbates the presentation and course of depressive illness.     

Updating positive and negative stimuli in working memory in depression

Difficulties in the ability to update stimuli in working memory (WM) may underlie the problems with regulating emotions that lead to the development and perpetuation of mood disorders such as depression. To examine the ability to update affective material in WM, the authors had diagnosed depressed and never-disordered control participants perform an emotion 2-back task in which participants were presented with a series of happy, sad, and neutral faces and were asked to indicate whether the current face had the same (match-set) or different (break-set or no-set) emotional expression as that presented 2 faces earlier. Participants also performed a 0-back task with the same emotional stimuli to serve as a control for perceptual processing. After transforming reaction times to control for baseline group differences, depressed and nondepressed participants exhibited biases in updating emotional content that reflects the tendency to keep negative information and positive information, respectively, active in WM. Compared with controls, depressed participants were both slower to disengage from sad stimuli and faster to disengage from happy facial expressions. In contrast, nondepressed controls took longer to disengage from happy stimuli than from neutral or sad stimuli. These group differences in reaction times may reflect both protective and maladaptive biases in WM that underlie the ability to effectively regulate negative affect.     

Stress reactivity and coping in seasonal and nonseasonal depression

Stress, stress reactivity, and coping skill use were examined in individuals with seasonal depression, nonseasonal depression, and nondepressed controls. Although participants in the two depressed groups reported using more avoidance coping strategies than controls, only participants in the seasonal depressed group reported using more season-specific coping (i.e., light-related strategies) than participants in the nonseasonal depressed and control groups. Individuals in the seasonal depressed group also reporting using acceptance coping strategies less frequently than individuals in the control group. Only participants in the nonseasonal depressed group, however, exhibited greater psychophysiological arousal in reaction to a laboratory stressor (i.e., unsolvable anagram task) when compared to participants in the seasonal and nondepressed control groups. Participants in both depressed groups reported greater impact of negative life events during the past 6 months than did controls. Similarities and differences in the two types of depression may have implications for the conceptualization and treatment of seasonal depression.     

Smiling, frowning, and autonomic activity in mildly depressed and nondepressed men in response to emotional imagery of social contexts

The study examined self-reported emotion and facial muscle and autonomic activity of depressed and nondepressed men in response to the social context of emotional situations. 20 university men, assessed on the Beck Depression Inventory, were asked to imagine happy and sad situations with and without visualizing other people. No differences were found between men classified as depressed and nondepressed on self-reported emotion and facial muscle activity. Smiling did not show differences between social contexts although self-reported happiness was increased during happy-social compared to happy-solitary imagery. Adjusting smiling for social context differences in happiness showed less smiling during happy-social than during happy-solitary imagery. In contrast, self-reported sadness and frowning were greater during sad-social compared to sad-solitary imagery. No differences between social contexts were found when frowning was adjusted for social context differences in sadness. Depressed-scoring men showed higher mean heart rate during sad-social than sad-solitary imagery whereas nondepressed-scoring men showed higher mean heart rate during happy social compared to happy-solitary imagery. The results indicate that men may frown more when sad but generally do not smile more during happy-social imagery, independent of depression. Depressed mood may affect heart rate during sad imagery but may not alter facial muscle activity and self:reported emotion in men.     

Reward sensitivity in depression: a biobehavioral study

The approach-withdrawal model posits 2 neural systems of motivation and emotion and hypothesizes that these systems are responsible for individual differences in emotional reactivity, or affective styles. The model also proposes that depression is characterized by a deficit in reward-seeking behavior (i.e., approach motivation) and is associated with a relative decrease in left frontal brain activity. The authors tested aspects of this model by comparing the electroencephalogram alpha power of depressed and nondepressed individuals during a task that manipulated approach motivation. The study found that control participants and individuals with late-onset depression exhibited the hypothesized increase in left frontal activity during the approach task but individuals with early-onset depression did not. This suggests that early-onset depression may be associated with a deficit in the hypothesized approach motivation system.     

Is this happiness I see? Biases in the identification of emotional facial expressions in depression and social phobia

The present study was designed to examine the operation of depression-specific biases in the identification or labeling of facial expression of emotions. Participants diagnosed with major depression and social phobia and control participants were presented with faces that expressed increasing degrees of emotional intensity, slowly changing from a neutral to a full-intensity happy, sad, or angry expression. The authors assessed individual differences in the intensity of facial expression of emotion that was required for the participants to accurately identify the emotion being expressed. The depressed participants required significantly greater intensity of emotion than did the social phobic and the control participants to correctly identify happy expressions and less intensity to identify sad than angry expressions. In contrast, social phobic participants needed less intensity to correctly identify the angry expressions than did the depressed and control participants and less intensity to identify angry than sad expressions. Implications of these results for interpersonal functioning in depression and social phobia are discussed.     

负性情境诱导下抑郁个体的情绪Stroop效应：ERPs研究

运用ERPs技术探讨了正常和抑郁个体在中性和负性情境诱导下的情绪Stroop效应。结果发现正常被试在负性情境下对中性词判断的错误率比在中性情境下更高,对负性词加工的P1波幅减小、N1增大,出现了Stroop效应;抑郁被试在两种情境下对负性词加工的P1和 N1波幅没有差异。研究结果提示,抑郁个体在负性情境下出现注意脱离困难和资源不足,难以解决情绪冲突任务,支持了注意脱离损伤假说,并进一步说明抑郁个体的情绪选择性注意加工会受到心境一致性状态的影响,因过多的注意资源卷入从而出现负性情绪调节不良。实验结果为探讨抑郁个体对负性情绪的注意加工和调节过程提供了来自电生理的证据。     

Overgeneral autobiographical memory in depressed adolescents with, versus without, a reported history of trauma

Autobiographical memory retrieval is fundamental to the developing self-concept in adolescence, to emotion regulation, and to social problem solving and has been shown to be compromised in adolescents diagnosed with depression (R. J. Park, I. M. Goodyer, & J. D. Teasdale, 2002). The authors of the present study assessed autobiographical memory overgenerality in a sample of depressed adolescent participants with, versus without, a reported history of trauma and never-depressed control participants by using an emotion word-cueing paradigm. The authors' analyses showed for the first time that adolescents with major depression and with no reported history of trauma exhibited an overgeneral memory bias. They also revealed that depressed adolescents who reported a history of trauma retrieved fewer overgeneral memories than did depressed adolescents who reported no history of trauma. Among depressed adolescents who reported a history of trauma, more severe posttraumatic stress symptoms were associated with less overgenerality. Possible accounts of these findings are suggested.     

Intensity of positive and negative emotions: Explaining the association between personality and depressive symptoms

The aim was to examine to what extent emotional intensity accounted for associations between the Big Five personality dimensions and depressive symptoms. Study 1 tested the model cross-sectionally, using survey data of 266 Dutch social science students. Study 2 experimentally examined how personality dimensions were related to emotional reactivity after exposure to various emotional stimuli. Dutch psychology students (N = 130) reported on their personality and viewed an amusing or sad film clip, after which the change in intensity of experienced positive and negative emotions was assessed. Individuals scoring higher on neuroticism generally experienced more intense negative emotions, through which they experienced a higher level of depressive symptoms. Individuals who were more agreeable experienced a lower level of depressive symptoms indirectly through higher general intensity of positive emotions. More agreeable individuals showed stronger increase in negative emotions and stronger decrease in positive emotions, though after exposure to the sad stimulus only. Although replication is needed, our results offer empirical support for a more taylor-made approach in decreasing nonclinical depressive symptoms taking into account both personality characteristics and emotion regulation.     

Memory for emotional faces in naturally occurring dysphoria and induced sadness

The aim was to establish if the memory bias for sad faces, reported in clinically depressed patients (Gilboa-Schechtman, Erhard Weiss, & Jeczemien, 2002; Ridout, Astell, Reid, Glen, & O'Carroll, 2003) generalises to sub-clinical depression (dysphoria) and experimentally induced sadness. Study 1: dysphoric (n = 24) and non-dysphoric (n = 20) participants were presented with facial stimuli, asked to identify the emotion portrayed and then given a recognition memory test for these faces. At encoding, dysphoric participants (DP) exhibited impaired identification of sadness and neutral affect relative to the non-dysphoric group (ND). At memory testing, DP exhibited superior memory for sad faces relative to happy and neutral. They also exhibited enhanced memory for sad faces and impaired memory for happy relative to the ND. Study 2: non-depressed participants underwent a positive (n = 24) or negative (n = 24) mood induction (MI) and were assessed on the same tests as Study 1. At encoding, negative MI participants showed superior identification of sadness, relative to neutral affect and compared to the positive MI group. At memory testing, the negative MI group exhibited enhanced memory for the sad faces relative to happy or neutral and compared to the positive MI group. Conclusion: MCM bias for sad faces generalises from clinical depression to these sub-clinical affective states.     

Measuring emotional expression with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis program often is used as a measure of emotion expression, yet the construct validity of its use for this purpose has not been examined. Three experimental studies assessed whether the LIWC counts of emotion processes words are sensitive to verbal expression of sadness and amusement. Experiment 1 determined that sad and amusing written autobiographical memories differed in LIWC emotion counts in expected ways. Experiment 2 revealed that reactions to emotionally provocative film clips designed to manipulate the momentary experience of sadness and amusement differed in LIWC counts. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiment 2 and found generally weak relations between LIWC emotion counts and individual differences in emotional reactivity, dispositional expressivity, and personality. The LIWC therefore appears to be a valid method for measuring verbal expression of emotion.     

Mood regulation in depression: Differential effects of distraction and recall of happy memories on sad mood

Recent research suggests that the recall of positive memories plays an important role in mood regulation. In this study, the authors examined the ability of currently depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants to regulate sad mood through the recall of positive memories or through distraction. Although improvement in mood was found for all participants in response to distraction, under instructions to recall positive memories, never-depressed participants' moods improved, whereas formerly depressed participants' sad moods remained unchanged. It is important to note that depressed participants exhibited a worsening of their sad moods after recalling positive memories. These results suggest both that depression is associated with an impaired ability to use positive recall to regulate a sad mood and that this impairment continues to be evident following recovery.     

Terror Management and Meaning: Evidence That the Opportunity to Defend the Worldview in Response to Mortality Salience Increases the Meaningfulness of Life in the Mildly Depressed

Previous terror management research has demonstrated that mildly depressed participants show a greater increase in worldview defense in response to reminders of their mortality than do nondepressed participants. Because the cultural worldview is posited to provide a meaningful conception of life, we hypothesized that mildly depressed participants who defend their worldview in response to mortality salience (MS) would increase their perception that the world is meaningful. A preliminary study first examined the Kunzendorf No Meaning Scale as a measure to assess perceptions of meaning. In the primary study, mildly depressed and nondepressed participants contemplated their own mortality or a neutral topic, evaluated two targets in a manner that either allowed them to defend their worldview or that did not, and then completed the Kunzendorf No Meaning Scale. As predicted, mildly depressed participants who had the opportunity to defend their worldview in response to mortality salience reported greater meaning in life than did mildly depressed participants who did not have the opportunity to defend their worldview, or mildly depressed participants not exposed to mortality salience. Implications for understanding and treating depression are briefly discussed.     

Use of positive interventions: Does neuroticism moderate the sustainability of their effects on happiness?

Previous research indicates that performing positive activities boosts happiness. The present studies examined whether neuroticism would moderate the sustainability of the effects of positive activities on happiness. Study 1 showed that the effects of counting blessings/kindness daily for seven days lasted a week after participants stopped performing the activity, but only for low-neuroticism individuals (who reported increased happiness) and not high-neuroticism individuals. However, a week post-intervention, gratitude-/kindness-listing participants were more likely to choose an amusing rather than a sad film, regardless of neuroticism differences. This suggests that behavioral choice is more sensitive to positive intervention effects than self-reported happiness. In Study 2, high-neuroticism individuals who occasionally visualized and wrote about their best possible selves over three weeks were happier than their counterparts in the control condition. The present research illustrates that although neuroticism moderates the sustainability of positive intervention effects, encouraging continuance of positive activities may produce more lasting effects.     

Performance benefits of depression: sequential decision making in a healthy sample and a clinically depressed sample

Previous research reported conflicting results concerning the influence of depression on cognitive task performance. Whereas some studies reported that depression enhances performance, other studies reported negative or null effects. These discrepant findings appear to result from task variation, as well as the severity and treatment status of participant depression. To better understand these moderating factors, we study the performance of individuals-in a complex sequential decision task similar to the secretary problem-who are nondepressed, depressed, and recovering from a major depressive episode. We find that depressed individuals perform better than do nondepressed individuals. Formal modeling of participants' decision strategies suggested that acutely depressed participants had higher thresholds for accepting options and made better choices than either healthy participants or those recovering from depression.     

积极情绪加速心血管反应恢复的自主神经活动机制

通过对不同情绪唤醒状态下的心率变异性（HRV）和呼吸性窦性心率不齐（RSA）分析,探讨了积极情绪加速高唤醒消极情绪引起的心血管反应向基线恢复的自主神经活动机制。实验表明：与在观看高唤醒恐惧影片结束后观看悲伤影片和中性视频比较,观看高唤醒恐惧影片结束后观看快乐影片加速了高唤醒恐惧影片引起的心率、指脉等心血管反应向基线的恢复;与在观看高唤醒恐惧影片结束后观看悲伤视频和中性视频材料比较,观看高唤醒恐惧影片结束观看快乐影片后的恢复期,被试的迷走神经激活水平迅速增强,迷走神经激活水平甚至超过基线期。因此,积极情绪加速高唤醒消极情绪刺激引起的心血管反应向基线恢复,其自主神经活动机制是在积极情绪状态下个体有更强的迷走神经激活。