Abstract
The present study was designed to address questions raised in previous research concerning the manner in which depressed and nondepressed individuals process and utilize environmental information. Depressed and nondepressed subjects participated in a two-part task requiring them to respond to hypothetical problematic social situations. Subjects indicated their performance expectations before completing the first part of the task and subsequently evaluated their performance. Prior to undertaking the second part of the task, subjects received personal feedback ostensibly based on their responses on the first part of the task. Subjects received feedback that was either generally favorable or generally unfavorable, or received no feedback. Subjects then indicated their expectations for the second part of the task, completed the task, and evaluated their performance. Although depressed subjects were initially less optimistic than were nondepressed subjects and evaluated their performance somewhat less favorably, their performance on the two tasks was judged by external raters to be comparable to that of the nondepressed subjects. Negative feedback lowered the expectations of both depressed and nondepressed subjects; in addition, subjects receiving positive feedback also made surprisingly lower performance evaluations for the second task. The actual performance of subjects was not affected by the feedback. These results are discussed in terms of both cognitive and interactional models of depression, and implications for the treatment of depression and for future research are presented.
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Cane, D.B., Gotlib, I.H. Depression and the effects of positive and negative feedback on expectations, evaluations, and performance. Cogn Ther Res 9, 145–160 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01204846
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01204846