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Depressives' future-event schemas and the social inference process
1Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. reich.16@osu.edu
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|May 26, 1998
Summary
Depression impacts how people interpret others' behavior, especially when cognitive resources are limited. Depressed individuals make more pessimistic judgments under cognitive load, a difference explained by their future-event expectancies.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Depression is associated with negative cognitive biases.
- Previous research has yielded inconsistent findings on depression's effect on social inferences.
- Cognitive load may influence the expression of these biases.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how depression affects social inferences under varying cognitive loads.
- To explore the role of future-event expectancies in depression-related differences in characterizations.
- To reconcile inconsistent findings in prior research.
Main Methods:
- Two studies were conducted involving depressed and nondepressed participants.
- Participants made dispositional or situational inferences about a target's performance under cognitive load or no load.
- Study 2 examined the influence of schema-based future-event expectancies.
Main Results:
- Under cognitive load, depressed individuals made more pessimistic characterizations than nondepressed individuals.
- No depression-related differences in inferences were observed when cognitive resources were sufficient.
- Schema-based future-event expectancies accounted for the observed differences.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive load is a critical factor in depression-related biases in social perception.
- Depression influences social inferences through pessimistic future-event expectancies.
- These findings clarify previous inconsistencies regarding depression and social cognition.