Contingency judgments by depressed college students: sadder but not always wiser

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Depression is often associated with negative self-perceptions and a reduced sense of personal control.
• Alloy and Abramson's research indicated that depressed individuals possess more accurate perceptions of control in certain situations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how the presence of an observer influences perceptions of control in depressed and nondepressed college students.
• To examine the interaction between depression, observer presence, and outcome frequency on perceived control.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted using a contingency learning task.
• Participants included depressed and nondepressed college students.
• Varying conditions included the presence or absence of an observer and the frequency of response-independent outcomes.

Main Results:

• In the absence of an observer, nondepressed students perceived more control than depressed students, replicating prior findings.
• The presence of an observer led depressed students to perceive greater control, especially when outcomes were frequent.
• Observer presence eliminated differences in perceived control between depressed and nondepressed students when outcomes occurred infrequently.

Conclusions:

• The typically accurate perceptions of control in depressed individuals can be disrupted by specific situational factors, such as observer presence and frequent outcomes.
• Observer presence may lead to an overestimation of personal control among depressed individuals in contingency learning tasks.
• These findings highlight the context-dependent nature of perceived control in depression.