The relations between sociotropy and autonomy, positive and negative affect and two proposed depression subtypes

We examined relations between the cognitive/personality model of sociotropy (SOC) and autonomy (AUT; Beck, 1983) and the affect/personality model of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA; Tellegen, 1985; Watson & Clark, 1984, 1992), and their relations to two proposed depression subtypes (Beck, 1983) in 60 adult depressed out-patients. SOC and NA scores shared significant common variance while facets of AUT and low PA were moderately related. Autonomous depressive symptoms appeared more depression-specific than sociotropic depressive symptoms. Findings did not confirm the usefulness of sociotropy and autonomy in the prediction of the symptom clusters, possibly due to the measurement of the depressive symptom clusters.