Depressive realism: A meta-analytic review

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Abstract

The current investigation represents the first meta-analysis of the depressive realism literature. A search of this literature revealed 75 relevant studies representing 7305 participants from across the US and Canada, as well as from England, Spain, and Israel. Results generally indicated a small overall depressive realism effect (Cohen's d = −.07). Overall, however, both dysphoric/depressed individuals (d = .14) and nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals evidenced a substantial positive bias (d = .29), with this bias being larger in nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals. Examination of potential moderator variables indicated that studies lacking an objective standard of reality (d = −.15 versus −.03, for studies possessing such a standard) and that utilize self-report measures to measure symptoms of depression (d = .16 versus −.04, for studies which utilize structured interviews) were more likely to find depressive realism effects. Methodological paradigm was also found to influence whether results consistent with depressive realism were found (d's ranged from −.09 to .14).

Highlights

► We empirically reviewed the depressive realism literature for the first time. ► Averaged across all studies, we found a small depressive realism effect. ► The presence of an objective standard of reality and method of assessment moderated this overall effect. ► Methodological paradigm also influenced whether a depressive realism effect was found.

Introduction

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a prevalent and debilitating national health problem. In the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (Kessler et al., 2003), MDD had the highest lifetime and 12-month prevalence rates (16% and 7%, respectively) of 14 major psychiatric disorders. Depression affects over 13 million individuals per year in the United States (Kessler et al., 2003). One estimate places the monetary cost in excess of $43 billion a year in treatment and lost productivity, a toll slightly larger than the costs of heart disease (Greenberg, Stiglin, Finkelstein, & Berndt, 1993). Cognitive therapy of depression (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979) is one of the most empirically-validated treatments for depression (e.g., Blackburn and Moorhead, 2001, DeRubeis and Crits-Cristoph, 1998). The theory underlying cognitive therapy posits that the depressed individual is negatively biased in their perceptions, while the primary goal in cognitive therapy is returning these individuals to a more objective state (Beck et al., 1979). However, there is research that has shown that the depressed individual may be better able to make certain judgments than nondepressed individuals, a phenomenon referred to as “depressive realism” (see Alloy & Abramson, 1988, for a review). The literature, regarding how best to characterize the cognitions of depressed individuals, is mixed in its support. This debate calls into question how it is that cognitive therapy exerts its therapeutic effect. If depressed individuals may be less biased in their ability to process information than their nondepressed peers (the position of depressive realism), then how does cognitive therapy work? A recent review (Longmore & Worrell, 2007) of the literature which investigated mediators of cognitive–behavioral therapy critiqued the lack of research demonstrating that cognitive change precedes symptom change. In addition, the review highlighted research that demonstrated that symptom change in cognitive–behavioral therapy may either precede cognitive change or occur in its absence. While research has consistently demonstrated that cognitive therapy is an effective treatment for depression, knowledge of how it results in therapeutic change can result in refinements of the treatment. These refinements can potentially make cognitive therapy more concentrated, cost-effective, and hence, available to more of the millions of people who suffer from this debilitating condition. While the current study represents the first quantitative synthesis of the depressive realism literature, it is important to understand more specifically how this literature differs from the prevailing theory on the cognition of depressed individuals.

Beck, 1967, Beck, 1987 theory, which formed the basis for cognitive therapy, posits that depressed affect is heavily influenced by recurrent thoughts with negative content, or automatic thoughts. These thoughts arise from deeply-held dysfunctional beliefs, or schemas, relating to the self, world, and future (e.g., “If I fail, no one will love me”). Beck identified that schemas and automatic thoughts, and the depressed affect that results from them, tend to be self-perpetuating as the depressed person both attends more to negative events in their lives and interprets events that occur after the onset of the depressed mood in light of their own dysfunctional cognitions. Beck (1987) characterizes the cognition of depressed individuals as “schema-driven” and depressed individuals themselves as possessing “depressive cognitive distortions.” The thoughts of nondepressed individuals, however, are characterized as “data-driven” and he described nondepressed individuals as possessing “nondepressive accuracy,” implying that depressed individuals' cognitions are systematically less informed by reality and, hence, more irrational. For instance, a depressed person may experience a significant success, but may minimize the importance of that event as due to chance because they believe that they are a failure. One of the primary goals of cognitive therapy for depression (Beck et al., 1979) is teaching depressed individuals to analytically monitor their own negative thoughts. This monitoring is done in service of both challenging and replacing these “schema-driven” thoughts with more accurate cognitions.

The “depressive realism hypothesis” (Alloy & Abramson, 1979) presented an alternative view to both conventional clinical wisdom and Beck, 1967, Beck, 1987 of the cognition of the depressed person. Research supportive of depressive realism illustrated not only that depressed individuals can make realistic inferences, but that they could do so to a greater extent than nondepressed individuals under certain circumstances. The first evidence for this phenomenon came in the form of studies utilizing what is called the “judgment of contingency task.” In this task, participants are asked to press a button, which results in the illumination of a light a percentage of the time that is predetermined by the experimenter. The dependent variable is the participant-rated contingency between pressing the button and the illumination of the light. As such, there are two factors that the participant needs to attend to: the occurrence of the outcome (i.e. light illumination) in the presence of the response (i.e. button press) and the occurrence of the outcome in the absence of the response. Higher positive contingencies result when the outcome occurs at a higher rate in the presence of the response than in its absence (i.e. button non-press). Negative contingencies are also possible where the outcome is less likely to occur in the presence of the response than in its absence (i.e. if pressing the button suppressed the illumination of the light). Consistent with the depressive realism effect, depressed individuals have been shown to more accurately make these kinds of judgments than nondepressed individuals (Alloy et al., 1985, Alloy et al., 1981, Musson and Alloy, 1987, ⁎Vazquez, 1987). Nondepressed individuals experienced what has been referred to as an “illusion of control,” where they overestimated their degree of control over the outcome. Depressed individuals experienced no such bias. In addition, these results were replicated over a variety of differing predetermined contingency conditions (⁎Abramson et al., 1981, ⁎Alloy and Abramson, 1979, ⁎Dobson and Pusch, 1995, ⁎Ford and Neale, 1985, ⁎Martin et al., 1984, ⁎Msetfi et al., 2005, ⁎Presson and Benassi, 2003, ⁎Vazquez, 1987).

Despite the number of studies utilizing the judgment of contingency task, not all of the research in support of depressive realism has used this methodological paradigm. Other methodological paradigms, referred to as self-evaluation of task performance (⁎Gotlib, 1983, Lobitz and Post, 1979, Rozensky et al., 1977) and recall of feedback studies (⁎DeMonbreun and Craighead, 1977, Dennard and Hokanson, 1986, ⁎Nelson and Craighead, 1977) have also produced findings compatible with depressive realism. Studies examining the self-evaluation of task performance have participants engage in a task, then rate their performance on that task without the benefit of feedback. The participants' self-performance is then compared to their actual performance to determine how accurately it was perceived. In research examining the recall of feedback, ratings of the participants' performance is given immediately after each subtask is completed, and the participants are then asked to rate their aggregate level of performance across the task as a whole. The participants' recall of the feedback they received is compared to the actual feedback to determine how accurate their recall was. In many studies (⁎DeMonbreun and Craighead, 1977, Dennard and Hokanson, 1986, ⁎Gotlib, 1983, Lobitz and Post, 1979, ⁎Nelson and Craighead, 1977, Rozensky et al., 1977), depressed individuals were better able to evaluate or recall their performance than nondepressed individuals.

Studies comparing expectancies of success on various tasks with depressed and nondepressed individuals have replicated these findings as well (Alloy and Abramson, 1980, Alloy and Seligman, 1979, Golin et al., 1979, Golin et al., 1977). In many of these studies, the predictions of future success of depressed and nondepressed individuals are compared on both chance-tasks as well as tasks designed to appear skill-determined (but are actually chance-determined), both prior to and immediately after reinforcement or punishment. Smaller changes in expectancies of success by nondepressed relative to depressed individuals have been found following reinforcement or punishment in the tasks designed to appear skill-based (Alloy and Abramson, 1980, Alloy and Seligman, 1979). Insofar as performance is expected to improve on skill-determined tasks, the findings that expectancies of the nondepressed participants do not change as much as the depressed participants is taken as evidence of perceptual bias in nondepressed participants. These differences between depressed and nondepressed participants have not been found using chance-determined tasks, where performance would not be expected to improve (Alloy and Abramson, 1980, Alloy and Seligman, 1979). Taken together, the aforementioned results have been interpreted by proponents of depressive realism as evidence that the depressed individual more accurately perceives their performance on these tasks.

Although the above-mentioned research attests to the robustness and generalizability of the depressive realism phenomenon, there are studies that report circumstances under which depressive realism effects are not obtained (Ahrens, 1986, Alloy and Abramson, 1988, Alloy and Ahrens, 1987, Benassi and Mahler, 1985, Buchwald, 1977, ⁎DeMonbreun and Craighead, 1977, Dennard and Hokanson, 1986, Hoehn-Hyde et al., 1982, ⁎Loewenstein and Hokanson, 1986, Moore and Fresco, 2007, ⁎Nelson and Craighead, 1977, ⁎Sacco and Hokanson, 1978, ⁎Sacco and Hokanson, 1982, Siegel and Alloy, 1990, Tennen and Herzberger, 1987, ⁎Vazquez, 1987, ⁎Vestre and Caulfield, 1986, Wenzlaff and Berman, 1985, August). These boundaries, in turn, suggest how depressive realism may fit into pre-existing theory in social psychology and psychopathology. Alloy and Abramson (1988), in their comprehensive narrative review of the depressive realism literature, identified six boundary conditions on depressive realism that possessed some degree of research support. Four of these conditions refer to constraints related to situations and two refer to constraints related to the individual.

The first of the situational constraints involves the object that is being perceived. Although the overwhelming majority of depressive realism research has asked participants to make judgments or otherwise report on their perceptions of their own behavior, some studies have compared judgments of the self versus judgments of another person between depressed and nondepressed persons (Ahrens, 1986, ⁎Ahrens, 1991, ⁎Ahrens et al., 1988, Alloy and Abramson, 1988, ⁎Gotlib and Meltzer, 1987, ⁎Javna, 1981, ⁎Martin et al., 1984, ⁎Pyszczynski et al., 1987, Siegel and Alloy, 1990, ⁎Vazquez, 1987). Results have shown that nondepressed participants demonstrate a positive bias in their perceptions of their own performance, but no bias in the perceptions of the performance of others. In addition, depressed participants demonstrate relatively realistic perceptions of their own performance, but a positive bias for their perceptions of others' performance (see ⁎Gotlib and Meltzer, 1987, ⁎Javna, 1981, ⁎Pyszczynski et al., 1987, and the performance of females in Martin et al., 1984 for exceptions).

The second of the situational constraints is whether the judgment or perception is made in public or private (Benassi and Mahler, 1985, ⁎Sacco and Hokanson, 1978, ⁎Sacco and Hokanson, 1982, ⁎Strack and Coyne, 1983). Findings indicate that the cognitions of nondepressed individuals are more optimistic in public than in private, while the cognitions of depressed individuals are less responsive to the presence of others (see Strack & Coyne, 1983 for an exception to this trend).

The third situational constraint is whether the perception is made immediately or after a delay between the to-be-perceived stimulus and when the perception is assessed. Even among studies utilizing the recall of feedback paradigm, only three studies directly compared immediate perceptions to those made after a delay (⁎DeMonbreun and Craighead, 1977, ⁎Nelson and Craighead, 1977, Wenzlaff and Berman, 1985, August). Both DeMonbreun and Craighead (1977) and Nelson and Craighead (1977) found that, while depressed participants' immediate perceptions were typically accurate, their memories made after a delay were negatively biased. In addition, nondepressed participants demonstrated a positive bias in both their immediate perceptions as well as their memories. Wenzlaff and Berman (1985) found similar results, with the significant exception that they found both the perceptions and memories of depressed participants to be accurate.

The final situational constraint of depressive realism is whether the to-be-perceived stimulus is ambiguous (i.e. explicitly neutral feedback) or unambiguous (i.e. clearly positive or negative feedback or information). Only one study has been conducted which has explicitly made this comparison. Dykman, Abramson, Alloy, and Hartlage (1989) evaluated the encoding of both ambiguous and unambiguous information which were both consistent and inconsistent with prior, deeply-held beliefs about the self. Results indicated that only ambiguous feedback was conducive to differential encoding by depressed and nondepressed participants.

Alloy and Abramson (1988) also identified two constraints which involve individual factors which have some degree of research support. The first of these constraints is the severity of the depressive disorder under study. Several theorists have suggested that perceptual bias and depression may not be related in a monotonically increasing function, where degree of bias is correlated with degree of depression (e.g., Beck, 1986, Evans and Hollon, 1988, Ruehlman et al., 1985). These authors have posited that nondepressed individuals may be characterized by positive biases, mildly depressed individuals by more realistic perceptions, and severely depressed individuals may be characterized by the negative perceptual and memory biases hypothesized by Beck, 1967, Beck, 1976). Two studies (Dennard and Hokanson, 1986, ⁎Loewenstein and Hokanson, 1986) which have directly addressed this question have compared mildly- and moderately-dysphoric college students and both have found these groups to be equally accurate. However, McKendree-Smith and Scogin (2000) compared the perceptions of bogus, neutral personality test feedback in nondepressed, mildly, and moderately/severely depressed college students. They found that the nondepressed and mildly depressed students rated their profiles more positively than the moderately/severely depressed students. Unfortunately, this study did not address the issue of realism, per se, as it was impossible to determine which interpretation was the “correct” one, given the lack of an objective comparison (i.e., the students' actual personality profiles).

Lastly, it is possible that perceptual bias is not caused by depressed mood at all, but by some, as yet unidentified third variable(s) that is correlated with depressed mood such as self-esteem (Tennen & Herzberger, 1987, but see Crocker, Alloy, & Tabachnik-Kayne, 1988 for a failure to replicate), dysfunctional attitudes (Bynum & Scogin, 1996), or attributional style. Moore and Fresco (2007) examined the depressive realism effect in the context of a well-validated, cognitive diathesis–stress theory of the etiology of a subtype of depression, hopelessness theory (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989). Of interest is the finding that attributional accuracy was more closely related to attributional style (both attributional accuracy and style were measured with different instruments) than it was to symptoms of depression.

Despite the apparent wealth of findings in support of depressive realism, numerous studies have provided less favorable results. Even within the seminal Alloy and Abramson's (1979) paper in which depressive realism was first introduced, results were mixed. Some conditions (see Experiment 1) failed to produce depressive realism results altogether, while other conditions (see the noncontingency, low-density reinforcement condition in Experiment 2 and Experiment 4) failed to produce the illusion of control in nondysphoric participants. Studies assessing the accuracy of depressed and nondepressed persons' delayed recall of both task-performance (⁎Craighead et al., 1979, ⁎DeMonbreun and Craighead, 1977) and ambiguous personality feedback (⁎Dykman et al., 1989, ⁎Gotlib, 1983, ⁎Vestre and Caulfield, 1986) have returned results largely showing both groups to be equally accurate. The literature examining the accuracy of recall of task-performance feedback has returned consistently similar results for ambiguous feedback (⁎Craighead et al., 1979, ⁎DeMonbreun and Craighead, 1977). Depressed individuals have been shown to underestimate positive feedback that they receive and nondepressed individuals have been shown to overestimate it (Buchwald, 1977, Wener and Rehm, 1975), illustrating bias among both groups.

In addition to this empirical inconsistency, the methodology of some of the literature in support of a depressive realism effect has been cogently undermined. There are three primary critiques of the depressive realism literature.

  • Critique 1: lack of gold standard

    Much of the research on the depressive realism effect has been criticized for not including a “gold-standard” of reality with which to compare participants' perceptions of events. This criticism seems to call into question the “realism” of the depressive realism hypothesis. Critiques of the depressive realism literature comes from several theorists (e.g., Ackermann and DeRubeis, 1991, Alloy and Abramson, 1988, Haaga and Beck, 1995), who perceptively note that much of the aforementioned research cannot be said to support depressive realism unequivocally as no objective standard of reality exists with which to compare many of the participants' ratings. Without a “gold-standard” measure of reality, it is theoretically impossible to state that one group or another's ratings are more or less “realistic.” It should be noted that Critique 1, the lack of a gold standard of reality, regards whether or not bias can be validly assessed, not whether or not it is present. Experimental stimuli lacking a gold standard are not biased, they simply cannot be said to evaluate claims relevant to depressive realism. Bias would be demonstrated by the perceptions of a participant to stimuli that possess an objective standard of reality. In the current investigation, a study was said to possess an objective standard of reality to the extent that the stimuli, being described by the participant, could be described in an unbiased fashion at the time it was perceived. For instance, in much of the research into the expectancies of success of depressed and nondepressed persons, there is no objective standard of reality with which to compare a prediction of the future or expectancy at the time that the rating is made. Whether or not the prediction comes to pass is the “objective standard of reality,” however this cannot be known by the participant at the time the predictions are made (before the prediction does or does not come to pass). As a result, other interpretations of the results of the expectancy studies can be plausibly offered. Ackermann and DeRubeis (1991) give the example of a nondepressed individual who may not decrease their expectancies of success following punishment for poor performance, thereby overestimating his/her chance of success, with the expectation that practice will improve their future performance. Without knowledge of how these individuals have benefited from feedback about their performance and practice in the past, it is impossible to tell if changes in their expectancies are reasonable, or “realistic,” or not. It should be noted, however, that not all research into expectancies of success fails to address this critique. Some studies asked participants to predict their success on an explicitly-labeled, chance-determined task with an objective probability of success which was readily-discernable (e.g., Alloy et al., 1981, Alloy et al., 1985, Golin et al., 1977, Golin et al., 1979, Lewinsohn et al., 1980). The expectation that practice will improve performance on a task determined purely by chance would not apply in this case. An example of such a task would be predicting the probability of rolling a single number on the roll of a die. Studies utilizing the judgment of contingency task are also excellent examples of research that provides such a gold standard. Participants are asked to rate the contingency between pressing a button and the illumination of a light, while this contingency is objectively manipulated by the experimenter and known precisely in advance.

    Studies of expectancies of success or future performance were not classified as possessing a gold standard of reality in the current investigation; however, this is not to say that these studies have not made important contributions to the study of depression. The study of expectations of future positive events has important implications for hopelessness, suicide, and risk for future episodes of depression. The issue of excluding expectancy studies given their importance to the field of depression raises the related issue of how the topics “depressive realism” and “cognitive therapy of depression” are related. It is important to recognize that these two topics are related, and not identical; part of the interest of depressive realism lies in the fact that its predictions run opposite to those of cognitive therapy of depression. However, Beck's theory is much more expansive than depressive realism. It canvasses not only the presence of cognitive and perceptual biases in the depression, but also how such biases are causal to depressive disorder, and how alleviating such biases results in alleviation of the disorder. A meta-analysis attempting to cover every study of relevance to such a theory, even if only constrained to studies using depressed samples, would be lengthy indeed. Inclusion of expectancy studies may be argued on the pragmatic grounds of their importance to the field of cognitive therapy. However, this argument conflates depressive realism and cognitive therapy of depression.2

  • Critique 2: inadequate assessment of depression

    The ability of self-report measures to validly assess clinical depression has also been called into question (Kendall, Hollon, Beck, Hammen, & Ingram, 1987). Other critiques of the depressive realism literature (Dobson and Franche, 1989, Haaga and Beck, 1995) highlight the fact that most of the studies that compose this literature use self-report measures, as opposed to structured clinical interviews, to assess whether participants are “depressed” or “nondepressed.” As a result, this criticism would seem to call into question whether the depressive realism phenomenon really concerns “depression” at all. Some have suggested that these individuals should be labeled as “dysphoric” or “nondysphoric” to distinguish them from the clinically depressed as clinical depression is predicated on several criteria not captured by self-report measures of depression (e.g., functional impairment; Kendall et al., 1987). In addition, self-report measures of depression are ineffective at the differential diagnosis of major depressive disorder and dysthymia, the conditions of interest, from related disorders, such as bipolar disorder. Individuals with bipolar disorder would also be predicted to score highly on self-report measures of depression while in the depressive phase of their illness. As a result, it is possible that many of the participants labeled in past studies of depressive realism may not have suffered from depression, per se. Despite the aforementioned critique, however, research which has investigated depressive realism claims in both dysphoric and clinically depressed participants (Dunn, Dalgleish, Lawrence, & Ogilvie, 2007) have found similar positive biases in both groups.

  • Critique 3: limited external validity

    Some theorists have critiqued the use of the judgment of contingency task or other laboratory tasks to assess the realism in people's perceptions of events (Dobson and Franche, 1989, Haaga and Beck, 1995). Systematic variation in experimental findings has been noted seemingly to indicate that more robust depressive realism effects are found in less externally valid, laboratory tasks. In addition, evidence of perceptual bias in depressed participants has been found in tasks that more closely mimic the judgments people make outside of the laboratory (Dobson and Franche, 1989, Moore and Fresco, 2007). This finding implies that the depressive realism effect may merely be an artifact of a particular type of task, or constrained to laboratory tasks that do not resemble real life, and is more a methodological artifact than a clinically-useful phenomenon.

Although previous reviews of the depressive realism literature (Dobson & Franche, 1989) have attempted to resolve the empirical heterogeneity in obtained results, a largely qualitative, “vote-counting” method was used to synthesize the literature. In this method, the number of studies finding in favor of or against a particular hypothesis is tallied, and the result with the most “votes” is declared the more valid. Traditionally, vote-counting relies exclusively on statistical significance and therefore ignores the size of the effects obtained in various studies. As a result, it has been criticized as more likely to result in biased conclusions than those based on more quantitative methods of research synthesis (Bangert-Drowns, 1986, Glass et al., 1981). In addition, no previous attempt to review the depressive realism literature has accounted for the three critiques mentioned above. The current study sought to quantitatively synthesize the literature on depressive realism with the hopes of resolving the empirical heterogeneity of findings while at the same time addressing the three aforementioned critiques.

Hypotheses:

  • 1.

    Consistent with expectations from the depressive realism hypothesis, effects averaged across studies will show less perceptual/attentional bias in dysphoric/depressed versus nondysphoric/nondepressed participants.

  • 2.

    Examination of the direction of bias in dysphoric/depressed and nondysphoric/nondepressed groups in isolation from one another will indicate that nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals will be biased toward positive stimuli, whereas dysphoric/depressed individuals will not evidence any such bias (consistent with the findings of depressive realism).

  • 3.

    Studies that utilize an objective standard of reality will evidence larger depressive realism effects than studies that do not (see Critique 1).3 No research has yet been conducted which has quantitatively evaluated the impact of this variable on the depressive realism effect. As a result, this hypothesis is largely exploratory. However, it is felt that Critique 1 is the most theoretically substantive of those listed above and has been included for this reason.

  • 4.

    Method of assessment will serve as a moderator of the depressive realism effect (see Critique 2). Specifically, studies that utilize structured clinical interview will produce larger depressive realism effects than studies that utilize self-report, as it is thought that the former will result in more homogenous depressed/nondepressed groups (thereby increasing resulting effect sizes).

  • 5.

    The external validity of the study will serve as a moderator of the depressive realism effect (see Critique 3). Dobson and Franche (1989) noted that much of the support for depressive realism came in the form of studies utilizing paradigms which do not well-represent perception outside of the laboratory (e.g., the judgment of contingency task). Studies which lack external validity would be expected to make this sacrifice at the expense of increase internal validity. We would expect that this increased control for extraneous variables would result in reduced error variance and larger depressive realism effects. As a result, it is expected that studies that lack external validity will produce larger differences between dysphoric/depressed and nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals and, therefore, larger depressive realism effects.

Although it would have been ideal to evaluate the validity of the six boundary conditions on depressive realism mentioned above, several factors prevented these analyses from being statistically and methodologically feasible. For the self- versus other-reference and public versus private conditions, the majority of the research conducted does not adequately address Critique 1. Most of the authors investigating the perception of self versus other were primarily interested in relative differences on this variable. As a result, establishing which version of the percept was “right” (self or other) was not a primary aim of this research. With regard to the literature evaluating the depressive realism effect in public versus private conditions, only three studies have been conducted making this comparison. Of these three studies, only two studies addressed Critique 1 and, of these two studies, information necessary to be useful in this meta-analysis could not be obtained for one of them. A similar lack of literature prevented the examination of ambiguous versus unambiguous stimuli and severity of depression. With regard to the examination of ambiguous versus unambiguous stimuli, only one study was found. Two studies have examined the relationship between severity of depression and the depressive realism effect. However, only one of these studies adequately addresses Critique 1 and, lamentably, information necessary to be useful in this meta-analysis could not be obtained from it. While sufficient number of studies have been conducted using both immediate and delayed perceptions, this hypothesis would be almost entirely redundant with a comparison of the recall of feedback paradigm to other methodological paradigms. This paradigm is primarily differentiated from the self-evaluation of task performance paradigm by the delayed nature of the perception in question. Because the effects of recall could not be differentiated from the particular effects of the paradigm under which it was evaluated, a comparison of immediate and delayed perceptions was not included in the present investigation.

Section snippets

Search procedure

The current investigation attempted to obtain data from as many studies relevant to depressive realism as possible. However, it was outside the scope of this study to attempt to canvass certain closely-related research areas. Studies utilizing the emotional Stroop and dot probe tasks in depressed and nondepressed individuals were not included in the current investigation. This exclusion was made on practical grounds as these studies could, and have (cf. MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986), composed

Results

In any research endeavor involving inferential statistics, random sampling is an important prerequisite in making generalizations from the particular participants sampled to the population about which the researcher wishes to draw conclusions. In meta-analysis, studies themselves, rather than participants, are the unit of analysis. Therefore, random sampling involves randomly sampling studies from the population of all relevant research articles. The difficulty in random sampling in

Discussion

The current investigation serves as the first attempt to quantitatively summarize and investigate the depressive realism literature. Although the results averaging across all studies addressing Critique 1 were generally supportive of the depressive realism hypothesis, the magnitude of the effect was small. However, the large degree of variability in the size of the effects obtained by the various studies in the depressive realism literature (QTotal = 493.89 [df = 74], p < .001, SD = .72, range: − 

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1

Now at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.

6

References marked by an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.

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