The effects of ego-involvement and task difficulty on actual and perceived performance of depressed college students

Determined whether situational manipulations of personal investment/threat influence the actual and perceived performance of depressed college students on a problem-solving task. Ss were 48 undergraduate students selected on the basis of scores on the MMPI D-scale. Ss within each level of depression were assigned randomly to either ego-involvement or task-involvement conditions. Involvement was manipulated through (a) instructions given to Ss; (b) method of data identification used; and (c) E interaction with a confederate who posed as a S. Within each condition of involvement, Ss were assigned randomly to unscramble either four- or six-letter anagrams. Results showed that in the difficult task-ego-involvement condition, the high depressed Ss made significantly more negative subjective appraisals of their performance than did the low depressed. These groups did not differ from each other under other conditions. It was concluded that depressives are most likely to evaluate negatively their performance in situations that present a challenge and/or threat to them and in which they may have some personal investment.