Cognitive mechanisms linking low trait positive affect to depressive symptoms: A prospective diary study

Low trait positive affect represents an affective vulnerability to depression, but little research has examined mechanisms linking low trait positive affect to depressive symptoms. The current study investigated whether the cognitive strategies of dampening and positive rumination mediated the prospective association between low trait positive affect and depressive symptoms. Participants were 209 undergraduate students who participated in an eight-week online study. Depressive symptoms and trait temperament were assessed at baseline, followed by seven weekly questionnaires which assessed cognitive strategies in response to weekly events and weekly depressive symptoms. Data were analysed using multilevel modelling following the mediation approach proposed by Nezlek. Results indicated that low trait positive affect significantly predicted less positive rumination but not greater dampening in response to weekly positive events. Less positive rumination in response to weekly positive events partially mediated the association between low trait positive affect and greater depressive symptoms across the study.     

Reducing hopelessness: the interation of enhancing and depressogenic attributional styles for positive and negative life events among youth psychiatric inpatients

A recovery model of depression (Needles & Abramson, 1990 Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 99, 156-165) proposes that depressed individuals who exhibit an enhancing attributional style for positive events (i.e. make stable, global attributions) will be more likely to regain hopefulness and, thereby, recover from depression when positive events occur. While only a few studies have directly tested this model among clinical and nonclinical adult samples, none have tested a clinical sample of children and adolescents. Furthermore, prior studies testing this model have failed to examine the interactive role of an 'enhancing attributional style' for positive events with a 'depressogenic attributional style' for negative events, as prescribed by the hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989 Psychological Review, 96, 358-372). The current study presents data demonstrating that depressogenic and enhancing attributional styles interact to predict differential decreases in hopelessness. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research also are presented.     

Negative life events and cognitive vulnerability to depression: Informant effects and sex differences in the prediction of depressive symptoms in middle childhood

While diathesis-stress models of cognitive vulnerability to depression (CVD) in childhood have been tested, few studies have included both parent- and child-reported negative life events, despite the fact that they provide unique information on events that may be relevant to depression risk in boys and girls. It was hypothesized that different types of stress may show moderation of CVD for boys and girls; specifically, we predicted that parent-reported stressors may moderate boys’ CVD, and that self-reported stress may play a more critical moderating role for girls. A community sample of 182 eight-year-olds completed measures of CVD at baseline, and child- and parent-reported measures of stress were collected at follow-up, one year later. Support for diathesis-stress models of CVD varied depending on child sex and the source of information on stress. Results highlight the importance of collecting multiple measures of stress in testing diathesis-stress models of CVD in middle childhood.     

Dampening of positive affect prospectively predicts depressive symptoms in non-clinical samples

Past research has convincingly shown that a ruminative response style to negative affect (NA) predicts concurrent and prospective levels of depressive symptoms. Recent findings suggest that how people respond to positive affect (PA) might also be involved in the development of depressive symptoms, although this has heretofore not been tested prospectively. Participants from two non-clinical samples (total N=487) completed measures of depressive symptoms, response styles to NA (negative rumination) and response styles to PA (positive rumination and mood dampening) at two assessments separated by a 3-month (Sample 1) and 5-month period (Sample 2). Results in both samples showed that increased dampening responses to PA predict depressive symptoms at follow-up, even when taking into account baseline depressive symptoms and ruminative responses to NA. The results suggest that (dampening) responses to PA add useful information above and beyond (ruminative) responses to NA in predicting depression symptoms prospectively.     

Specificity of parental bonding and rumination in depressive and anxious emotional distress

We examined how different dimensions of rumination may mediate the impact of parental bonding (lack of care and overprotectiveness) on negative emotional symptomatology (anxiety and depression). Survey data from participants were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that brooding rumination fully mediated the relationship between maternal care and depressive and anxious symptomatology. These findings suggest that to the extent that maternal caregivers are low in warmth and support, offspring are more likely to develop a brooding style of ruminative thinking associated with heightened emotional distress. This research supports the growing body of evidence suggesting that cognitive variables form a pathway between troublesome parent/child interactions and psychopathology.     

Influence of dysphoria on positive and negative cognitive reactivity to daily mood fluctuations

We used an experience sampling design to investigate the influence of dysphoria on positive and negative cognitive reactivity. Participants recorded their thoughts and mood four times per day on PDA devices for one week. We hypothesized that those higher in dysphoria would demonstrate a greater increase in negative thinking in response to negative mood, and a weaker increase in positive cognitions in response to positive mood. These hypotheses were largely supported. For those participants who reported higher initial dysphoria, there was a stronger association between negative mood and thinking and a weaker link between positive mood and thinking. Regression analyses indicated that positive and negative cognitive reactivity were independently related to dysphoria, suggesting that they represent distinct processes. Our results highlight the importance of understanding levels of both negative and positive cognitive reactivity and underscore the benefits of assessing mood and cognition with repeated measurements in "real-time," in order to better understand the antecedent effects of mood on thinking.     

Effects of incidental positive emotion and cognitive reappraisal on affective responses to negative stimuli

Previous studies have identified two powerful ways to regulate emotional responses to a stressor: experiencing incidental positive emotions and using cognitive reappraisal to reframe the stressor. Several cognitive and motivational theories of positive emotion support the formulation that incidental positive emotions may facilitate cognitive reappraisal. To test the separate and interacting effects of positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal, we first adapted an established picture-based reappraisal paradigm by interspersing blocks of positive emotion inducing and neutral pictures. Across two pre-registered studies (Studies 1, 2), reappraisal effectively decreased self-reported negative emotions and increased self-reported positive emotions; however, experiencing incidental positive emotions did not facilitate reappraisal success. In another preregistered study (Study 3), we employed a more powerful positive emotion induction via virtual reality (VR), used a social stress anticipation task, and instructed participants to reappraise the anticipated stressor positively. Although there was a robust effect of the positive emotion induction (relative to the neutral induction) on feeling more positive emotions throughout stress anticipation, the results again indicated that incidental positive emotions did not facilitate cognitive reappraisal. We propose that incidental positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal may constitute separate pathways of influence when regulating one's responses to negative events.     

Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems

A new questionnaire, named the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, has been constructed, measuring nine cognitive coping strategies people tend to use after having experienced negative life events. A test–retest design was used to study the psychometric properties and relationships with measures of depression and anxiety among 547 high school youngsters. Principal component analyses supported the allocation of items to subscales, while alphas of most subscales exceeded 0.80. Cognitive coping strategies were found to play an important role in the relationship between the experience of negative life events and the reporting of symptoms of depression and anxiety. The results suggest that cognitive coping strategies may be a valuable context of prevention and intervention     

Differences in negative life events between patients with anxiety disorders,depression and hypochondriasis

This study investigated whether some categories of adverse life events are differentially associated with specific types of emotional disorders. A life self-report measure of major life events was completed by 42 subjects with diagnoses of anxiety disorders, 46 subjects with major depression, 26 subjects with hypochondriasis and 73 nonclinical subjects (controls). As predicted, the onset of anxiety disorders, depression, and hypochondriasis appears to be differentially related with life stress of ‘threat’, ‘loss’, and ‘health’, respectively, previously experienced by the clinical subjects. Also, there were significant differences between clinical and nonclinical subjects on both perceived life stress and number of life events reported. Findings suggest a differential implication of psychosocial stress categories in particular emotional disorders (i.e., anxiety, depressive and hypochondriacal disorders). These results expand previous findings that have demonstrated an association between negative life events and psychopathology.     

The distinctiveness of hardiness, positive emotionality, and negative emotionality in National Guard soldiers

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to investigate the distinctiveness of hardiness (using the Short Hardiness Scale; Bartone, 1995) from the broader personality traits of negative emotionality and positive emotionality (NEM and PEM; assessed with items from the MMPI-2 PSY-5 scales); in a sample of 981 Army National Guard soldiers. Exploratory factor analyses demonstrated that hardiness items loaded on a separate factor from PEM and NEM items, and confirmatory factor analysis suggested that hardiness is not simply a sub-facet of either PEM or NEM. However, subsequent regression analyses found that hardiness did not predict symptoms of PTSD or depression beyond the effects of PEM and NEM among combat exposed soldiers.     

Individual differences in religiosity as a function of cognitive ability and cognitive style

The current study examines the degree to which individual differences in cognitive ability and cognitive style (rational thinking vs. experiential thinking) uniquely and jointly account for differences in religiosity. Using an array of measures of religiosity, results show that cognitive ability has a medium to large negative effect on various aspects of religiosity. Though also negatively related to religiosity, rational thinking style did not add significant unique effects, nor did it convey a significant indirect effect from cognitive ability. Experiential thinking was generally unrelated to ability but was positively related to some aspects of religiosity. Overall the results confirm that those with higher cognitive ability are less likely to accept religious doctrine or engage in religious behaviors and those with lower ability are more likely to accept religious doctrine and exhibit higher levels of fundamentalism. Cognitive style appears to play a lesser role in explaining individual differences in religiosity than cognitive ability.     

Emotional intelligence and psychological resilience to negative life events

This study investigated the relative importance of six emotional intelligence (EI) dimensions in the prediction of psychological resilience to multiple negative life events. The strength of relations between life events and distress varied markedly across three latent classes of participants, reflecting vulnerable, average and resilient profiles. Discriminant function analysis indicated that class membership varied as a function of four EI dimensions, with higher scores predicting membership to the resilient class. Across the 414 participants, Emotional Self-Awareness, Emotional Expression, Emotional Self-Control and particularly Emotional Self-Management appeared central to psychological resilience in the aftermath of multiple negative life events.     

Ruminative self-focus, negative life events, and negative affect

Ruminative thinking is believed to exacerbate the psychological distress that follows stressful life events. An experience-sampling study was conducted in which participants recorded negative life events, ruminative self-focus, and negative affect eight times daily over one week. Occasions when participants reported a negative event were marked by higher levels of negative affect. Additionally, negative events were prospectively associated with higher levels of negative affect at the next sampling occasion, and this relationship was partially mediated by momentary ruminative self-focus. Depressive symptoms were associated with more frequent negative events, but not with increased reactivity to negative events. Trait rumination was associated with reports of more severe negative events and increased reactivity to negative events. These results suggest that the extent to which a person engages in ruminative self-focus after everyday stressors is an important determinant of the degree of distress experienced after such events. Further, dispositional measures of rumination predict mood reactivity to everyday stressors in a non-clinical sample.     

Examining the role of positive and negative metacognitive beliefs in depression

Many psychological models have been developed to explain the development and maintenance of depression. The most widely evaluated model is the cognitive model of depression, and it is against this model that emerging models should be compared. Accordingly, this cross‐sectional study examined whether metacognitive beliefs, as specified in the metacognitive model of depression, would explain additional variance in depressive symptoms over dysfunctional attitudes; the core feature of the cognitive model. Moreover, mediational relationships between metacognitive beliefs, rumination, and depressive symptoms, predicted by the metacognitive model were also explored, whilst controlling for dysfunctional attitudes. A sample of 715 students completed self‐report questionnaires measuring depressive symptoms, rumination, dysfunctional attitudes, and metacognitive beliefs. Regression analyses showed that metacognitive beliefs made a significant statistical contribution to depressive symptoms, after controlling for age, gender, rumination and dysfunctional attitudes. Furthermore, as predicted by the metacognitive model, the relationship between positive metacognitive beliefs and depressive symptoms was fully mediated by rumination, whilst the relationship between negative metacognitive beliefs about uncontrollability and danger and depressive symptoms was partially mediated by rumination. The results provide further empirical support for the metacognitive model of depression and indicate that positive and negative metacognitive beliefs play an integral role in the maintenance of depressive symptoms.     

Personality and sex differences in emotional responsiveness to positive and negative cognitive stimuli

To investigate the influence of psychoticism (P) and neuroticism (N) on emotional responding, a re-analysis was carried out on subjective and physiological data collected while Ss (n = 50) repeatedly imagined anxious (intrusive) or depressive, and pleasant thoughts or images. High N was associated with a greater negative mood state subsequent to imagining the distressing cognitive stimuli, though there was no relation with physiological reactivity. However, high P scorers did evidence less overall cardiac reactivity and, to a lesser extent, fewer skin resistance responses than low P Ss. The results are discussed in light of the moderating influence that stimulus and response characteristics as well as gender differences can have on the interaction between personality traits and emotional responding.     

Ruminative subtypes and coping responses: Active and passive pathways to depressive symptoms

Individuals draw on a variety of cognitive strategies—some active, some passive—as a way of coping with stress and dysphoria. Previous research suggests that the impact of rumination—one such strategy—on depression depends on whether rumination takes the passive form of brooding versus the more active form of reflection. This study tests whether brooding and reflection explain the effects of passive versus active coping responses, respectively, on depressive symptoms. In an undergraduate sample (n=284), brooding partially mediated the relationship between passive coping and depressive symptoms, whereas reflection did not. Reflection moderated the relationship between active coping and symptoms, such that low active copers who were high in reflection endorsed more symptoms than those low in reflection. Brooding and reflection may operate within cognitive–behavioural response pathways characterised by an active/passive distinction. Whether reflection is maladaptive likely depends on the active nature of the surrounding coping response.     

Gender differences in the pathway from adverse life events to adolescent emotional and behavioural problems via negative cognitive errors

The aim of this study was to test for gender differences in how negative cognitive errors (overgeneralizing, catastrophizing, selective abstraction, and personalizing) mediate the association between adverse life events and adolescents’ emotional and behavioural problems (measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire). The sample consisted of 202 boys and 227 girls (aged 11–15 years) from three state secondary schools in disadvantaged areas in one county in the South East of England. Control variables were age, ethnicity, special educational needs, exclusion history, family structure, family socio‐economic disadvantage, and verbal cognitive ability. Adverse life events were measured with Tiet et al.'s (1998) Adverse Life Events Scale. For both genders, we assumed a pathway from adverse life events to emotional and behavioural problems via cognitive errors. We found no gender differences in life adversity, cognitive errors, total difficulties, peer problems, or hyperactivity. In both boys and girls, even after adjustment for controls, cognitive errors were related to total difficulties and emotional symptoms, and life adversity was related to total difficulties and conduct problems. The life adversity/conduct problems association was not explained by negative cognitive errors in either gender. However, we found gender differences in how adversity and cognitive errors produced hyperactivity and internalizing problems. In particular, life adversity was not related, after adjustment for controls, to hyperactivity in girls and to peer problems and emotional symptoms in boys. Cognitive errors fully mediated the effect of life adversity on hyperactivity in boys and on peer and emotional problems in girls.     

Ambulatory emotional reactivity to negative daily life events predicts remission from major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is often associated with altered emotional reactivity. However, the functional significance of altered emotional reactivity in MDD is uncertain. This study was the first to examine the predictive relationship between intensely sampled ambulatory emotional reactivity and the clinical course of MDD. Forty-six outpatients who met criteria for MDD underwent six days of experience sampling of their ambulatory reactivity to everyday negative and positive life events. After experience sampling, all outpatients received pharmacotherapy with supportive psychotherapy and were followed clinically for 18 months. At one month, less emotional reactivity to negative and positive daily events predicted higher depressive symptom severity. Importantly, patients who exhibited less negative emotional reactivity to daily negative life events were less likely to recover from MDD over the 18 month follow-up. Relationships between ambulatory emotional reactivity and MDD course were not accounted for by the duration or the severity of initial MDD symptoms. Diminished ambulatory emotional reactivity appears to be functionally significant in depression. Intensive sampling of ambulatory emotions may have utility for predicting the clinical course of MDD.     

Cognitive style and depressive symptoms in elderly people - Extending the empirical evidence for the cognitive vulnerability-stress hypothesis

Introduction

Depression is common in older people and its identification and treatment has been highlighted as one of the major challenges in an ageing world. Poor physical and cognitive health, bereavement, and prior depression are important risk factors for depression in elderly people. Attributional or cognitive style has been identified as a risk factor for depression in children, adolescents and younger adults but its relevance for depression and mood in elderly people has not been investigated in the context of other risk factors.

Method

Sixty-four older adults from an ‘extra care’ living scheme (aged 59-97) were recruited for a 6-week prospective study to examine the relationships between cognitive style and depressive symptoms.

Results

Regression analyses revealed that, when other risk factors were controlled for, cognitive style and its interaction with stress predicted changes in depressive symptoms, therefore partially replicating prior research.

Conclusion

Cognitive-stress-vulnerability models also apply to elderly populations, but may be rather predictive of changes in depression when facing lower levels of stress.     

A discrete emotions approach to positive emotion disturbance in depression

Converging findings suggest that depressed individuals exhibit disturbances in positive emotion. No study, however, has ascertained which specific positive emotions are implicated in depression. We report two studies that compare how depressive symptoms relate to distinct positive emotions at both trait and state levels of assessment. In Study 1 (N=185), we examined associations between depressive symptoms and three trait positive emotions (pride, happy, amusement). Study 2 compared experiential and autonomic reactivity to pride, happy, and amusement film stimuli between depressive (n=24; DS) and non-depressive (n=31; NDS) symptom groups. Results indicate that symptoms of depression were most strongly associated with decreased trait pride and decreased positive emotion experience to pride-eliciting films. Discussion focuses on the implications these findings have for understanding emotion deficits in depression as well as for the general study of positive emotion.