Depression,restraint and eating behavior

Contrary to the belief that weight loss is a principal symptom of depression, several recent studies have suggested that certain people gain rather than lose weight when depressed. The present experiment concerned the effects of experimentally induced mood states on the eating behavior of high- and low-restraint persons. Sixty-eight female undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of three groups each designed to induce a different mood state (depressed, neutral or elated), and were classified as high or low restraint based on their responses to a questionnaire. During the mood induction procedure subjects were provided with the opportunity to eat. High-restraint persons induced into a depressed mood ate significantly more than high-restraint persons induced into neutral or elated moods, and more than low-restraint persons induced into a depressed mood. This effect was most prominent among subjects who scored high on the weight-fluctuation factor of the restraint scale. There was no evidence that this effect occurred among subjects who scored high on the concern for dieting factor. The role of emotional arousal on the self-control over eating behavior of high weight-fluctuation persons, and the implications of these findings for the evaluation of depression were discussed.     

Interpersonal Reactions to Depression and Physical Disablllty In Dyadic Interactions1

Examined the interpersonal responses of persons engaged in dyadic interactions with confederates who enacted either depressed or socially appropriate roles and appeared either with or without a physical disability. Subject negative evaluations of confederates were indirectly obtained from a thought-listing measure. The overt behaviors of subjects were surreptitiously recorded on videotape and measures of verbal and nonverbal behavior were acquired. Subjects spoke less to the depressed targets and had significantly higher rates of negative evaluations of these persons. In addition, subjects gazed less at the depressed confederates. These effects were not moderated by target physical appearance. Findings are discussed as they relate to social models of depression and the stigmatizing effects of disability.     

Mood and realism of confidence judgements of one''s own answers to general knowledge questions

This study examines the effect of a depressed mood on the realism of subjects' confidence judgements of the correctness of answers to general knowledge questions. Research conducted on how mood influences cognitive processes gives reason to expect that a depressed mood might increase the realism of individuals' confidence ratings. Sixty subjects were divided into three conditions, two of which were given mood induction, one condition into an elated-happy mood and one condition into a depressed-sad mood. As evidenced by subjects' responses to mood scales only the depressed condition was affected by the mood induction. All subjects answered 93 general knowledge questions and rated their confidence in the correctness of the answer given. Subjects were instructed to think aloud when answering the last 31 questions. The conditions did not differ with respect to the proportion of questions answered correctly, mean level of confidence, nor with respect to three measures of the realism in subjects' confidence ratings (calibration, over/underconfidence and resolution). The results were the same when questions answered with and without think aloud instructions were analysed separately.     

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.     

Effects of responses to depression on the remediation of depressive affect

The effects of different types of responses to a depressed mood on the duration and severity of the mood were examined. On the basis of Nolen-Hoeksema's (1987) response styles theory of depression, it was hypothesized that distracting, active responses would be more effective in alleviating a depressed mood than would ruminative, passive responses. A depressed mood was induced in 35 male and 34 female Ss, and subjects were randomly assigned to engage in 1 of 4 types of responses: an active task that distracted them from their mood; a passive, distracting task; an active task designed to lead to ruminations about their mood; or a passive, ruminative task. As predicted, the greatest remediation of depressed mood was found in Ss in the distracting-active response condition, followed in order by the distracting-passive, ruminative-active, and ruminative-passive response conditions. Degree of rumination had a greater impact on remediation of depressive affect than level of activity, with greater rumination leading to lesser remediation of depressive affect. In addition, the effects of the response tasks were limited to depressed mood. The implications of these results for interventions with depressed persons are discussed.     

Effect of depression level and length of acquaintance on reactions of others to a request for help

This experiment examined an interpersonal-process view of depression by assessing subjects' reactions to a request for help from a hypothetical depressed or nondepressed person with whom they had been acquainted for a relatively short (2 weeks) or long (1 year) period of time. Subjects responded to each of the four hypothetical persons by indicating their probable affective reactions to the request, the number of minutes they would be willing to help, their desire for future social contact with the hypothetical person, and their expectations of future requests for help. Requests from depressed persons elicited significantly more anger and social rejection but equal amounts of concern and willingness to help. This mixed response pattern was interpreted as providing partial support for an interpersonal-process view of depression. In addition a path analysis provided limited support for Coyne's (1976b) hypothesis that rejection of depressed persons results from the negative mood they induce in others.     

Predicting depression using earliest childhood memories

In order to investigate the utility of earliest childhood memories (EMs) in clinical assessment, this study investigated the value of EMs in predicting naturally occurring depressive mood states. Of interest were those features of EMs that discriminate depressed from nondepressed individuals. Subjects were 212 undergraduate volunteers who completed the Beck Depression Inventory, the Profile of Mood States, and a self-administered EM questionnaire. Utilizing thematic predictors derived from cognitive and psychodynamic theories of depression, depressed subjects were differentiated from nondepressed subjects at a rate significantly greater than chance, p less than .001, with a highly respectable estimate of cross-validation shrinkage. The findings demonstrate the phenomenon of mood dependent recall in autobiographical memory, namely, that memory attributes are strongly influenced by current mood state. Consistent with psychodynamic theories of depression and in contrast to cognitive theory, depressive mood states appear to facilitate retrieval of memory schemas involving deprivation and disturbing human interaction. Schemas involving loss of control, failure, or reactions to noncontingent reinforcement (perceptions of the self as agent) appear less salient than relationship schemas (perceptions of the self as related) in depressive experience.     

The influence of mood on perceptions of social interactions

Interpreting our own and others' social behaviors is an important cognitive task in everyday life. Recent work in cognitive psychology suggests that temporary mood states may have a significant effect on the way information about common social events is processed. This study investigated how (a) a person's current mood, (b) the target of the judgments (self vs other), and (c) the characteristics of the social episode (formal-informal; intimate-nonintimate) influenced people's assessment of, and memory for, social behaviors. Subjects were videotaped while engaging in four different kinds of interactions with trained confederates. One day later subjects were hypnotized, and a happy, positive, or depressed, negative mood was induced. They then watched and rated their own and their partner's interactions on the videotape. Results showed strong mood influence on behavior assessments and recall memory, and significant effects due to target (self vs other) and the type of interaction episode. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for contemporary research on social cognition, and their relevance to cognitively based theories of social maladjustment and depression are considered.     

Familiality of mood repair responses among youth with and without histories of depression

Affect regulation skills develop in the context of the family environment, wherein youths are influenced by their parents', and possibly their siblings', regulatory responses and styles. Regulatory responses to sadness (mood repair) that exacerbate or prolong dysphoria (maladaptive mood repair) may represent one way in which depression is transmitted within families. We examined self-reported adaptive and maladaptive mood repair responses across cognitive, social and behavioural domains in Hungarian 11- to 19-year-old youth and their parents. Offspring included 214 probands with a history of childhood-onset depressive disorder, 200 never depressed siblings and 161 control peers. Probands reported the most problematic mood repair responses, with siblings reporting more modest differences from controls. Mood repair responses of parents and their offspring, as well as within sib-pairs, were related, although results differed as a function of the regulatory response domain. Results demonstrate familiality of maladaptive and adaptive mood repair responses in multiple samples. These familial associations suggest that relationships with parents and siblings within families may impact the development of affect regulation in youth.     

Self-discrepancies in clinical depression and social phobia: cognitive structures that underlie emotional disorders?

Previous research indicates that self-discrepancies are cognitive structures that can induce emotional discomfort. The present study compared clinically depressed and social phobic subjects (plus controls) to determine whether different self-discrepancies were associated with the two disorders. In Part 1, it was shown that the depressives possessed the greatest discrepancy between their actual and ideal/own self-states, whereas the social phobics possessed the greatest discrepancy between their actual and ought/other self-states. In a later, ostensibly unrelated study, subjects responded verbally to questions about other people while their mood changes, skin conductance responses, and verbalizations were recorded. The questions included attributes from the subject's ideal and ought self-states that were mismatches with attributes from his or her actual self, as well as mismatch attributes from other subjects. Priming with self-referential mismatches induced momentary syndromes of dejection or agitation (depending on the type of mismatch). The depressives and social phobics showed the greatest increases in dejection and agitation, respectively, according to their dominant self-discrepancy. The results suggest that specific cognitive structures may underlie clinical depression and anxiety.     

Endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs depends on current mood state

In two studies we tested the hypothesis that endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs depends on current mood state for persons who are vulnerable to depression. The first study showed that reports of dysfunctional beliefs vary with spontaneous diurnal mood fluctuations in 47 depressed psychiatric patients. The effect of mood state was highly significant (p less than .01); dysfunctional thinking increased when mood was worst and decreased when mood was best. The second study conceptually replicated this finding in a population of asymptomatic subjects. As predicted, reports of dysfunctional beliefs varied as a function of mood state in 14 persons who had experienced a depressive episode but not in 27 who had never been depressed. These findings support the cognitive theory of depression, which proposes that dysfunctional beliefs are vulnerability factors for depression but also that reporting of dysfunctional beliefs depends on current mood state.     

A study of diurnal patterns of depressed mood

The study investigated diurnal patterns of depressed mood in a sample of normal subjects. In all, 105 college undergraduates were followed for a period of 10 days, using a self-administered psychological diary. Eighty-four percent of the days in which feelings of depressed mood were reported involved some type of mood swing. The most frequent pattern of mood shift was a pattern of gradually increasing depressed mood, reaching its peak in the evening. Persons who reported days of constant depressed mood reported higher levels of physical symptoms and less pleasure in social interactions than persons who reported only depressed days involving mood swing.     

Better mood and better performance. Learning rule-described categories is enhanced by positive mood

Theories of mood and its effect on cognitive processing suggest that positive mood may allow for increased cognitive flexibility. This increased flexibility is associated with the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, both of which play crucial roles in hypothesis testing and rule selection. Thus, cognitive tasks that rely on behaviors such as hypothesis testing and rule selection may benefit from positive mood, whereas tasks that do not rely on such behaviors should not be affected by positive mood. We explored this idea within a category-learning framework. Positive, neutral, and negative moods were induced in our subjects, and they learned either a rule-described or a non-rule-described category set. Subjects in the positive-mood condition performed better than subjects in the neutral- or negative-mood conditions in classifying stimuli from rule-described categories. Positive mood also affected the strategy of subjects who classified stimuli from non-rule-described categories.     

Emotional experience and expression in schizophrenia and depression.

The emotional responses of schizophrenic, depressed, and normal subjects and whether differences in the emotional responding of these groups depended on how emotional responses were elicited or measured were examined. Twenty-three blunted and 20 nonblunted schizophrenics, 17 unipolar depressed subjects, and 20 normal subjects were exposed to a series of affect-eliciting stimuli. The stimuli varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and in level of cognitive demand. Subjects reported their subjective experiences, and their facial expressions were videotaped. Blunted schizophrenics were the least facially expressive, although their reported subjective experiences did not differ from those of the other groups. The nonblunted schizophrenics were more responsive than the depressed subjects to the positive stimuli, although the two groups did not differ in their clinical ratings of affective flatness.     

The Effect of Mood and Social Outlook on Hypothetical Juridic Decisions1

Data are reported for a laboratory experiment which examines both the impact of information about remote social events on judgments of defendants' guilt or innocence in two court cases and the roles of cognitive and affective elements in mediating these judgments. Subjects were exposed to one of four pretested news bulletins which covaried cognitive factors (positive or negative social information) and affective ones (positive or negative mood stimuli). In accord with previous findings, the results indicate that social information and the changes in social outlook that it caused were of primary importance in altering subjects' judgments about defendants. Subjects who heard positive social information in radio newscasts were more lenient in their judgments of defendants than were those who heard negative social information. Additional findings pertaining to the mediators of this effect suggest that positive mood amplified the impact of social information whatever its direction, while negative mood attenuated it.     

Mood and memories of parental rearing styles: A comparison of mood effects on questionnaire-cued and free recall of autobiographical memories

The relationship between memories of childhood experiences (e.g., adverse parenting) and adult depression often found raises questions of interpretation. On the one hand, both laboratory studies and clinicians' experiences suggest that subjects in a depressed mood frequently show a negative bias in perceptions and memories. Negative childhood memories in depressed persons might, therefore, be interpreted as epiphenomena of depressed mood instead of etiological factors. On the other hand, memories of childhood experiences seem remarkably stable across changes in depressed mood, especially when memories are elicited by means of standardized questionnaires. In the mood and memory literature several explanations for this stability are offered. For one thing, highly structured cues to elicit memories (such as in questionnaires) are hypothesized to be less susceptible to mood bias than unstructured memory cues (such as in free recall procedures). On the other hand, resource allocation theorists suggest that childhood memories, being well established and rehearsed, are relatively impervious to mood bias no matter how they are elicited. In this study we examined whether different methods of eliciting childhood memories (i.e., free recall and questionnaire-cued) are differentially susceptible to mood bias. To this aim, we used a mood induction procedure to induce depressed, neutral, and elated mood and assessed childhood memories both before and after the mood induction using both questionnaires and free recall to elicit memories. Results suggested that memories elicited by means of free recall as well as by means of questionnaire-cued recall were susceptible to depressed and elated mood bias. The implications for research addressing the link between childhood experiences and depression are discussed.     

Reasons for Living: Mood Effects Revisited1

To explore the relationship between mood and cognitive restraints to suicide, 98 undergraduates experienced the Velten mood-induction procedure to induce an elated, depressed, or neutral (unchanged) mood. They then completed the Multiple Adjective Affect Checklist, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, and the Reasons for Living Inventory. Surprisingly, compared to neutral students, depressed students reported more overall reasons for living, greater feelings of responsibility to family, and more moral objections to suicide, and elated students reported more feelings of responsibility to family. Most responsive depressed students also had higher fear of suicide than others, and most responsive elated students had higher survival and coping beliefs than others. Results suggest that a mildly depressed mood caused students' increased reliance on cognitive beliefs about not committing suicide, and may indicate that mildly depressed persons might benefit from and be particularly receptive to cognitive interventions stressing beliefs about family and religious commitments.     

Adaptive social reasoning in depressed mood and depressive vulnerability

In this study we evaluate the evolutionary hypothesis that depressed states are associated with more adaptive reasoning about social risks, such as defeat or rejection. A total of 78 women were administered one of two mood inductions (depressed vs. neutral), followed by four Wason selection reasoning tasks (truth-detection, cheater-detection, and two social risk tasks addressing attachment and social competition risks). Those in the depressed mood condition gave significantly more correct responses on a task requiring participants to reason about social competition. There were no significant differences on performance for the other reasoning tasks between the two mood induction conditions. Furthermore, measures of two dimensions of depression prone personality (sociotropy and autonomy) were associated with less adaptive reasoning about social risks. These results suggest that mildly depressed states may indeed facilitate adaptive reasoning within certain domains, whereas vulnerability to depression may be associated with a relative impairment in reasoning about social risks.