Social impression formation and depression: examining cognitive flexibility and bias

Depression is associated with a bias toward negative interpretations of social situations and resistance to integrating evidence consistent with positive interpretations. These features could contribute to social isolation by generating negative expected value for future social interactions. The present study examined potential associations between depressive symptoms and positive (i.e. trust and liking) and negative (i.e. distrust and disliking) social impression formation of individuals who previously appeared in positive or negative contexts. Participants (N = 213) completed the Interpretation Inflexibility Task and were subsequently asked to provide social impression ratings of characters from each scenario type of the task (i.e. positive and negative) as well as characters not previously encountered. In examining social impression formation, higher severity of depressive symptoms was associated with higher negative social impression ratings regardless of scenario outcome, as well as lower positive social impression ratings, but only for characters who previously appeared in positive contexts. Those higher in depression also rated novel characters as significantly more unlikeable and untrustworthy and to an equivalent degree as the characters previously encountered. These findings suggest a role of negative interpretation bias and inflexibility in contributing to negative evaluations of potential social interaction partners in depression.