The mediating role of automatic thoughts in the personality-event-affect relationship

Although cognitive theory gives automatic thoughts a causal role in the onset of negative mood and depressive symptoms, little research has directly tested this relationship, and no research has examined whether automatic thoughts explain the effects of personality factors, life events, and positive mood on negative affect. Accordingly, automatic thoughts were prospectively tested as a mediator of the effects of personality vulnerability factors, positive affect, and hassles on mood. Measures of self-criticism and dependency were administered at baseline, and measures of automatic thoughts, hassles, and positive and negative affect were administered once per week for 4 weeks to 102 college students. Automatic thoughts fully mediated the effects of self-criticism and partially mediated the effects of dependency and hassles on mood. Findings suggest that negative thoughts only partially account for the relationship among personality, hassles, and mood. Results also showed that the impact of positive affect on negative affect may be mediated by the presence or absence of automatic thoughts.