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Internal focus of attention and depression: A study of daily experience

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Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between self-focus of attention and depression, using a naturalistic experiential sampling methodology. Daily ratings of mood and descriptions of daily life events were obtained from 62 subjects over a period of 56 consecutive days. Daily events were rated for severity and coded as referring to a self-focused or external-focused event. Scores on private self-consciousness (PSC) and depression question-naires both correlated significantly with the number of daily events coded as self-focused and negative. Self-focusing to positive life events did not correlate with depression or with PSC. If depression and high PSC individuals do respond with negative mood to internal events, then their daily moods should be more unpredictable from the objective conditions of their daily life. This hypothesis was examined by assessing the linkage between daily moods and objective life events for each subject. Mood-event linkage scores were computed as within-subject correlations between each subject's daily mood ratings and the raters' evaluation of the severity of the subject's life events each day. High PSC individuals showed daily moods that were less linked to the objective conditions of their daily life. Again, this effect held only for negative life events. Results are discussed in terms of attentional biases and the relative importance of self-referential processing of negative rather than positive life events in the maintenance of depression.

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Preparation of the manuscript was supported, in part, by grant number R01 MH42057 from the National Institute of Mental Health to the first author.

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Larsen, R.J., Cowan, G.S. Internal focus of attention and depression: A study of daily experience. Motiv Emot 12, 237–249 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00993113

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