Self-focused attention, coping responses, and distressed mood in everyday life

Several questions concerning the relation between self-focused attention and depressed mood were examined: (a) Does the association involve global negative affect, rather than sadness per se? (b) is self-focus associated with specific negative affects other than sadness? and (c) does the association occur at the between-subjects or within-subject level? Also hypothesized was that self-focus is associated with coping responses that may perpetuate negative mood. In an idiographic/nomothetic design, 40 male community residents completed daily reports for 30 days. Results suggest that self-focus is linked with global negative mood as well as specific negative affects other than sadness and that the association occurs on a between-persons, rather than a day-to-day within-person, basis. In addition, highly self-focused men reported using passive and ruminative coping styles, which in turn were associated with distressed affect.     

Adaptive and Maladaptive Self-Focus: A Pilot Extension Study With Individuals High and Low in Fear of Negative Evaluation

Previous research in depressed participants has supported the differentiation of self-focus into distinct modes of self-attention with distinct functional effects. In particular, Rimes and Watkins (2005) investigated the effects of self-focused rumination on overgeneral thinking and found that analytical, evaluative self-focus increased global negative self-judgments, whereas self-focus low in analytical thinking decreased such judgments in depressed participants. Given that self-focused attention and rumination have been implicated in the maintenance of social anxiety, the present study investigated the effects of these two distinct forms of self-focused attention on global negative self-judgments in an analogue sample for social anxiety (high and low fear of negative evaluation, FNE). Individuals high and low in FNE (n = 41 per group) were randomly allocated to analytic (abstract, evaluative) or experiential (concrete, process-focused) self-focused manipulations. As predicted, in high FNE individuals, the experiential self-focus condition decreased ratings of the self as worthless and incompetent pre- to post-manipulation, whereas the analytical self-focus condition maintained such negative self-judgments. Analytical and experiential self-focus did not differ in their effects on mood. The results suggest that an experiential mode of self-focused rumination may be adaptive in social anxiety.     

The influence of affect on self-focused attention: Conceptual and methodological issues

A number of investigators have suggested that affective states influence the focus of attention. One recent proposal is that negative moods increase self-focus. This review considers the evidence that bears on this hypothesis. Conceptual issues pertaining to the construct of self-focus are discussed first. Next, the various parameters that influence attentional focus are presented in order to provide a way of organizing the mood/selffocus literature. Studies that have used state measures of mood and self-focus are considered in this context. Methodological limitations of existing studies are discussed and directions for future work provided.     

The cognitive regulation of emotions: The role of success versus failure experience and coping dispositions

Attention deployment and generating specific types of cognitions are central cognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation. Two groups of hypotheses make contradicting predictions about the emotion-cognition relationship. The moodcongruency hypothesis expects the emergence of mood-congruent cognitions (i.e., negative mood leads to negative and positive mood to positive cognitions). Similarly, a substantial body of research suggests that negative mood induces selffocus, whereas positive mood elicits an external focus of attention. The moodrepair hypothesis, on the other hand, assumes that persons in a negative mood state summon thoughts incongruent with that state and divert attention away from the self. However, the temporal sequence of cognitions assessed as well as coping dispositions, such as vigilance and cognitive avoidance, may moderate these relationships. Positive and negative emotional states were elicited by exposing the participants to the experience of success or failure in a demanding cognitive task. Cognitions that were present after emotion induction were assessed by means of a thought-listing procedure. For the total sample, results clearly confirmed the moodcongruency hypothesis. Thought order was a critical factor only for changes in self-focus. Thought valence (positive, neutral, negative) as well as self-focus were substantially influenced by coping dispositions.     

Effects of dispositional self-focus,appraisal and attention instructions on responses to a threatening stimulus

Abstract

Two studies are reported which explored the relationship between self-focused attention and anxiety. The first study tested the hypotheses that self-focused attention is associated with anxiety in threatening situations and that the relationship is mediated by negative appraisal processes. Study 1 showed no significant interaction between self-focus and negative appraisal on state-anxiety. However, self-focus was associated with increments in state-anxiety, high levels of worry and somatic symptom reports in a threatening situation. The relationship between self-focus and state-anxiety was mediated by somatic symptoms. Study 2 used cognitive and somatic self-attention instructions and external focus instructions to verify the hypothesis that self-focus on somatic arousal is associated with anxiety. It is concluded that specific self-focusing tendencies are associated with the elicitation and exacerbation of anxiety.     

Effects of Rumination and Mindful Self-Focus Inductions During Daily Life in Patients With Remitted Depression: An Experimental Ambulatory Assessment Study

Rumination has been proposed as an important risk factor for depression, whereas mindful attention is considered a protective form of self-focusing. Experimental studies have demonstrated differential effects of these modes when induced in the lab. However, their impact on daily life processes is poorly understood, particularly in individuals vulnerable to depressive relapses. The aim of our study was to examine short- and longer-term effects of repeated brief rumination and mindful self-focus inductions during daily life on momentary mood, cognitions, and cortisol in patients with remitted depression (rMDD) as well as in healthy individuals, and to identify their potential differential effects in these groups. The study involved repeated short ambulatory inductions of a ruminative or a mindful self-focus during daily life with additional assessments of momentary mood, rumination, self-acceptance, and cortisol over 4 consecutive days in a sample of patients with rMDD (n = 32, ≥2 lifetime episodes, age 19–55 years) and matched healthy controls (n = 32, age 21–54 years). Multilevel models revealed differential immediate effects of the two induction modes on all momentary mood and cognitive outcomes (all p’s < .001), but not on cortisol. Detrimental effects of rumination over mindful self-focus inductions were particularly strong for cognitions in the patient group. Longer-term effects of the inductions over the day were lacking. This study underlines immediate deteriorating effects of an induced ruminative compared to a mindful self-focus on momentary mood and cognitions during daily life in patients with rMDD and in healthy individuals. The observed stronger rumination-related reactivity in patients suggests heightened cognitive vulnerability. Understanding rumination- and mindfulness-based mechanisms of action in real-life settings can help to establish mechanism-based treatment options for relapse prevention in depression.     

Rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus in depressed patients

Rumination has been proposed as a cognitive risk factor for the onset and maintenance of depression. In parallel, mindfulness interventions have shown to reduce the risk for recurrence of depressive episodes. This study aimed to investigate effects of short periods of induced rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus on sad mood in depressed patients and to assess possible moderator effects of habitual variables on respective mood changes. Seventy-six depressed patients 3.5 years after discharge from inpatient treatment were subjected to negative mood induction and subsequently randomly assigned to a rumination, distraction, or mindful self-focus induction. Habitual aspects of rumination, distraction, and mindfulness were assessed by questionnaires. Compared to rumination, the induction of a mindful self-focus and of distraction showed clear beneficial effects on the course of negative mood. While habitual distraction predicted better mood outcomes across all conditions, patients high in habitual mindfulness tended to show stronger negative mood reduction specifically after the induction of a mindful self-focus. This study indicates that - similar to distraction - an experimentally induced mindful self-focus is able to reduce negative mood in depressed patients. Implications regarding possible subgroups of patients who might particularly benefit from mindfulness-based interventions are discussed.     

Self-focused attention and negative affect: a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis synthesized 226 effect sizes reflecting the relation between self-focused attention and negative affect (depression, anxiety, negative mood). The results demonstrate the multifaceted nature of self-focused attention and elucidate major controversies in the field. Overall, self-focus was associated with negative affect. Several moderators qualified this relationship. Self-focus and negative affect were more strongly related in clinical and female-dominated samples. Rumination yielded stronger effect sizes than nonruminative self-focus. Self-focus on positive self-aspects and following a positive event were related to lower negative affect. Most important, an interaction between foci of self-attention and form of negative affect was found: Private self-focus was more strongly associated with depression and generalized anxiety, whereas public self-focus was more strongly associated with social anxiety.     

Adaptive and maladaptive ruminative self-focus during emotional processing

Ruminative self-focus on mood, problems and other aspects of self-experience can have both mal adaptive consequences, perpetuating depression, and, adaptive consequences, promoting recovery from upsetting events. Increasing evidence suggests that these contrasting effects may be explained by distinct varieties of ruminative self-focus, each with distinct functional properties. This study tested the prediction (Emotional processing, three modes of mind and the prevention of relapse in depression. Behav. Res. Therapy, 37 (1999) S53) that an experiential mode of self-focused attention would facilitate recovery from an upsetting event in comparison to a conceptual-evaluative mode of self-focused attention. To test these contrasting effects experimentally, 69 participants wrote about an induced failure experience in either a conceptual-evaluative condition (e.g. "Why did you feel this way?"), or an experiential condition ("How did you feel moment-by-moment?"). Consistent with the hypothesis, higher levels of trait disposition to ruminate were associated with relatively greater increases in negative mood 12 h after the failure in the conceptual-evaluative condition compared to the experiential condition. Furthermore, the conceptual-evaluative condition resulted in more intrusions about the failure than the experiential condition. These results support the differentiation of rumination into distinct modes of self-focused attention with distinct functional effects; a conceptual-evaluative mode that is maladaptive and an experiential mode that is adaptive.     

(Not) Thinking about you: Differences in victims’ and perpetrators’ self-focus after interpersonal and intergroup transgressions

We tested the hypothesis that, following a transgression, victims and perpetrators differ in their focus of attention. In three studies (total N = 740), we manipulated participants’ social role (victim vs. perpetrator) in a hypothetical scenario (Studies 1 and 2) and in a perceived real conflict (Study 3) in an interpersonal (Studies 1 and 2) and an intergroup (Study 3) context. Results from all studies confirmed that victims show a stronger self-focus than perpetrators. Moreover, results suggest victims’ higher self-focus as a predictor of willingness to reconcile. Participants’ self-focus mediated the effect of social role on reconciliation intentions as a single mediator (Study 2), or in sequence with their motivation to consider the other party's needs (Study 3). Overall, the present research suggests that victims and perpetrators differ in their focus of attention, and that this difference has important theoretical and practical implications for reconciliation between individuals and between groups.     

Self-focused attention, gender, gender role, and vulnerability to negative affect

Research has independently shown that both gender and self-focused attention are linked to depression. In this article, we report a series of studies investigating the relation between these variables. Using a standard self-focusing manipulation, Study 1 suggested that women evidence a greater propensity to self-focus than men. We replicated these findings in Study 2. In Study 3, we conducted an experiment to determine if sex role in conjunction with experimentally increased self-focused attention would lead to more emotional distress after a negative event had occurred. Results suggested that feminine individuals who received a self-focusing manipulation responded with greater levels of self-focused attention and negative affect than did any other group. We interpreted findings in terms of a tendency to self-focus that might prime feminine people to experience depression, or alternately, as a lack of self-focusing that may insulate masculine individuals from the experience of depression.     

The symptom perception hypothesis revised: depression and anxiety play different roles in concurrent and retrospective physical symptom reporting

According to the classic symptom perception hypothesis (Costa & McCrae, 1987; Watson & Pennebaker, 1989), the global predisposition to frequently experience a variety of negative emotions-that is, neuroticism (N) or trait negative affectivity (NA)-is associated with inflated physical symptom reporting. We tested a revision of this hypothesis, which posits distinctive roles for depression and anxiety in the physical symptom experience. Three studies tested predictions from the revised symptom perception hypothesis: (a) that depressive affect should be related to inflated retrospective physical symptom reports and (b) that anxious affect should be related to inflated concurrent, or momentary, physical symptom reports. Study 1 assessed the relations among N/NA, depressive affect, and recall of physical symptoms experienced in the previous 3 weeks. Depressive affect was uniquely and positively associated with recalling more symptoms. When entered with depressive affect in multiple regression analyses, neuroticism was not associated with level of symptoms recalled. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to anxious, depressed, angry, happy, or neutral mood inductions and then reported about concurrent symptom experience. Participants in the anxious mood condition reported significantly more concurrent physical symptoms than did those in the other 4 conditions. In Study 3, anxious, depressed, or neutral mood was induced, followed by assessment of both concurrent and retrospective physical symptoms. Those assigned to the anxious mood induction reported more concurrent symptoms, while those in the depressed mood condition reported having experienced more symptoms in the past. These findings are consistent with the idea that encoding and retrieval processes, which are differentially associated with anxious versus depressed affect, influence different aspects of physical symptom reporting. The results have implications for self-diagnosis, medical treatment-seeking, and care, and potential insights about other complex social and interpersonal behaviors are discussed.     

Mood-induced self-focused attention.

The influence of mood on self-focused attention was explored in 2 experiments involving the induction of moods in the laboratory. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that mood states, whether pleasant or unpleasant, induce self-focused attention. This hypothesis was supported using a sentence completion task as the measure of self-focus. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 results using a measure of self-complexity as an index of self-focus. These experiments provide support for a model of affect-action sequences the first step of which entails the turning of attention toward the self in response to the arousal of affect.     

Children's and adults' understanding of the impact of nutrition on biological and psychological processes

Four studies examined children's and adults' beliefs about the impact of nutrition on growth and mood states. In Studies 1 and 2, 271 participants (preschoolers through adults) judged the impact of healthy and unhealthy nutrition on height and weight. In Studies 3 and 4, 267 participants judged the impact of healthy and unhealthy nutrition on positive and negative mood states. The results suggest that young children demonstrate a co‐existence of an ontologically distinct theory of biology as well as a theory of cross‐domain interaction when reasoning about the impact of food on biological and psychological processes.     

Gender Differences in the Correlates of Self-Referent Word Use: Authority, Entitlement, and Depressive Symptoms

ABSTRACT Past research shows that self-focused attention is robustly positively related to depression, and women are more likely than men to self-focus in response to depressed mood (e.g., R. Ingram, 1990 ; S. Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987 ). The goal of the current study was to further delineate gender differences in the correlates of self-focus as measured through the frequency of spontaneous use of self-referencing words. The frequency of such word use during a life history interview was correlated with self-reports, observations by clinically trained interviewers, and personality judgments by acquaintances. Results indicated that the relationship between self-reference and observations of depressive symptoms was stronger for women than men, and the relationship between self-reference and narcissistic authority and entitlement was stronger for men than for women. Acquaintance ratings supported these correlates. These findings illuminate the importance of using multiple measures and paying attention to gender differences in research on self-focus.     

Distinct modes of ruminative self-focus: impact of abstract versus concrete rumination on problem solving in depression

One account for the negative effects of rumination on social problem solving (SPS) is the symptom-focus hypothesis, which proposes that focus on symptoms amplifies the vicious cycle between depressed mood and negative cognition. The authors tested a contrasting account, the reduced concreteness hypothesis, which postulates that the abstract thinking typical of rumination impairs SPS. In 40 depressed patients and 40 never-depressed controls, SPS was assessed before and after versions of symptom-focused rumination known to differentially induce abstract versus concrete self-focus (E. Watkins & J. D. Teasdale, 2001). As predicted by reduced concreteness theory, relative to abstract self-focus, concrete self-focus improved SPS in depressed patients, suggesting that the particular mode of symptom-focus, rather than symptom-focus per se, determines the effects of rumination on problem solving.     

The Role of Self-Focus,Task Difficulty,Task Self-Relevance,and Evaluation Anxiety in Reaction Time Performance

Self-focused attention has been found to facilitate task performance in some instances and inhibit it in others. Among chronically anxious individuals it appears to consistently hinder performance. Less is known about the impact of self-focus on the performance of normal individuals. The present study examines the role of task difficulty, task self-relevance, and presence of evaluation anxiety in the performance effects of self-focus among normal individuals. Participants performed a simple reaction time (RT) and a lexical decision task, in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, with or without self-focus. Self-focus and evaluation anxiety resulted in faster responding in simple RT, but there was no significant effect of self-focus on performance in the more difficult lexical decision task. Participants' heart rate (HR) was monitored and indicated that orienting was associated with slower RT in both experiments, and less orienting was found during self-focus and evaluation conditions. Results are interpreted in light of several self-focus theories.     

"Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effect of context on perception": Retraction of Avramova, Stapel, and Lerouge (2010)

Reports the retraction of "Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effects of context on perception" by Yana R. Avramova, Diederik A. Stapel and Davy Lerouge (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010[Aug], Vol 99[2], 203-214). This retraction follows the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel (further information on the investigation can be found here: https://www.commissielevelt.nl/). The Levelt Committee has determined data supplied by Diederik A. Stapel to be fraudulent. The other co-authors were unaware of his actions and were not involved in the collection of the fraudulent data. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2010-14719-001.) Five studies show that mood affects context-dependence, such that negative mood promotes attention to a salient target, whereas positive mood enhances attention to both target and context. Judgments of temperature (Study 1), weight (Study 2), and size (Studies 3 and 4) were more strongly affected by the context in a positive than in a negative mood. Moreover, these effects extend to the social domain: When perceiving a target person's emotions, happy people were more influenced by the context than were sad people (Study 5). Thus, positive mood enhanced, and negative mood reduced, the magnitude of perceptual context effects. The results suggest that this pattern is not easily explained in terms of effort or depth of processing differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Rumination and overgeneral memory in depression: effects of self-focus and analytic thinking

Previous research has shown that, compared with a rumination induction, a brief distraction procedure reduces overgeneral autobiographical memory in depression. The authors investigated whether this effect depends on reductions in analytic thinking or reductions in self-focus. Focus of attention (high vs. low self-focus) and thinking style (high vs. low analytical thinking) were independently manipulated in depressed patients in a 2 x 2 design. Autobiographical recall was measured pre- and postmanipulation. Thinking style significantly affected overgeneral memory, whereas focus of attention significantly affected despondent mood. Reducing analytical self-focus reduced overgeneral memory, suggesting that high levels of naturally occurring ruminative analytic thinking may be important in the maintenance of overgeneral memory. Overgeneral memory in depression may be associated with chronic ruminative attempts to make sense of current or past difficulties.     

The impact of negative moods on self-enhancing cognitions: the role of reflective versus ruminative mood orientations

This research program examined how self-focused attention to feelings affects the relation between mood negativity and self-enhancing thought. The primary hypothesis was that the particular manner in which people focus on their moods (reflective vs. ruminative) determines whether they reveal positive (i.e., mood-incongruent) or negative (i.e., mood-congruent) self-relevant thoughts in response to negative moods. Studies 1-4 revealed that social comparisons, temporal comparisons, and other self-enhancing cognitions (i.e., attributions, disidentification, relationship evaluations) are more likely to be mood incongruent when people adopt a reflective orientation to their negative feelings and more likely to be mood congruent when they adopt a ruminative orientation. Additionally, moods and mood orientations affected self-enhancing thoughts through the mediating influence of mood regulation goals and intentions (Studies 5 and 6).