Emphasizing Malleability in the biology of depression: Durable effects on perceived agency and prognostic pessimism

doi:10.1016/j.brat.2015.06.005

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Volume 71, August 2015, Pages 125-130

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2015.06.005 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Biological understandings of depression are increasingly dominant.
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These can lead to pessimistic beliefs about prognosis.
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We tested an educational video about the malleability of depression's biology.
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Results suggest that the intervention had both immediate and durable effects.
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This could have important clinical implications.

Abstract

Biological attributions for depression, which are currently ascendant, can lead to prognostic pessimism—the perception that symptoms are relatively immutable and unlikely to abate (Kvaale, Haslam, & Gottdiener, 2013; Lebowitz, Ahn, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2013). Among symptomatic individuals, this may have important clinical ramifications, as reduced confidence in one's own ability to overcome depression carries the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Previous research (Lebowitz, Ahn, et al., 2013) has demonstrated that educational interventions teaching symptomatic individuals about how the effects of genetic and neurobiological factors involved in depression are malleable and can be modified by experiences and environmental factors can reduce prognostic pessimism. While previous research demonstrated such effects only in the immediate term, the present research extends these findings by testing whether such benefits persist six weeks after the intervention. Indeed, among individuals who initially considered biological factors to play a major role in influencing their levels of depression, exposure to malleability-focused psychoeducation reduced levels of depression-related prognostic pessimism and stronger belief in their ability to regulate their moods. Critically, this benefit persisted six weeks after the intervention. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Section snippets

Participants and recruitment

Participants were recruited using the online Mechanical Turk system from Amazon.com, which allows users to complete short tasks in exchange for monetary compensation (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). The initial sample consisted of 454 US. adults (55.3% female, 43.4% male, 1.3% unknown gender; 83.9% White/Caucasian) ranging in age from 18 to 70 years (M = 33.27, SD = 10.62).

Six weeks after their initial (“T1”) participation, participants were contacted and asked to provide follow-up (“T2”)

Results

Unsurprisingly, BDI-II scores had a significant negative correlation with NMR scores (T1: r = −.53, p < .001; T2: r = −.56, p < .001) and a significant positive correlation with prognostic pessimism ratings (T1: r = .55, p < .001; T2: r = .58, p < .001). (See Appendix for further analyses involving BDI-II scores).

Ratings of the two biological factors as determinants of a participant's mood were significantly correlated (r = .53, p < .001) and were thus averaged to compute an index of the extent

Discussion

The present study conceptually replicates earlier research (Lebowitz et al., 2013) demonstrating that a brief psychoeducation intervention focusing on the malleability of biological factors involved in depression can significantly increase people's confidence in their own ability to recover from future depressive episodes. Most importantly, the present study indicates that the benefits of the intervention are durable rather than limited to the immediate term: significant effects were evident

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant number R01-HG007653].

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Shorter communicationEmphasizing Malleability in the biology of depression: Durable effects on perceived agency and prognostic pessimism

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants and recruitment

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgments

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Genetics in Medicine

Clinical Psychology Review

Clinical Psychology Review

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Clinical psychology review

Amazon's mechanical turk: a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?

Perspectives on Psychological Science

Measuring generalized expectancies for negative mood regulation: Initial scale development and implications

Journal of Personality Assessment

Genetic essentialism: on the deceptive determinism of DNA

Psychological Bulletin

Beck depression inventory-II

Genetic essentialism, neuroessentialism, and stigma: commentary on Dar-Nimrod and heine (2011)

Psychological Bulletin

Computational procedures for probing interactions in OLS and logistic regression: SPSS and SAS implementations

Behavior Research Methods

Shorter communication
Emphasizing Malleability in the biology of depression: Durable effects on perceived agency and prognostic pessimism