Commonsense beliefs about depression and antidepressive behaviour: A study of social consensus

The present study examines consensus in endorsed beliefs about depression and antidepressive behaviour in a group of 100 psychologists. Ss were given 20 pairs of items and asked to indicate which member of each pair they felt was ‘nearer the truth’. The numbers (and percentages) of Ss choosing each item was examined for each pair. Consensus was found to span the range from 100% agreement to near-complete disagreement and to be distributed roughly normally within the sample of items. People tended to agree about propositions that could be verified by an individual's own firsthand experience and observation and to disagree about more abstract matters that the ‘experts’ are still debating. The congruence of these findings with previous results in the present series of studies is discussed and suggestions for further exploration in the realm of ‘what everybody knows’ about depression and how to deal with it are given.