Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, London, SE5 8AZ, United Kingdom; The University of Manchester and Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, School of Psychological Sciences, Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
The University of Manchester and Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, School of Psychological Sciences, Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
Eur Psychiatry. 2015 Jun;30(4):448-53. doi: 10.1016/j.eurpsy.2015.02.005. Epub 2015 Mar 6.
One influential view is that vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with a proneness to experience negative emotions in general. In contrast, blame attribution theories emphasise the importance of blaming oneself rather than others for negative events. Our previous exploratory study provided support for the attributional hypothesis that patients with remitted MDD show no overall bias towards negative emotions, but a selective bias towards emotions entailing self-blame relative to emotions that entail blaming others. More specifically, we found a decreased proneness for contempt/disgust towards others relative to oneself (i.e. self-contempt bias). Here, we report a definitive test of the competing general negative versus specific attributional bias theories of MDD.
We compared a medication-free remitted MDD (n=101) and a control group (n=70) with no family or personal history of MDD on a previously validated experimental test of moral emotions. The task measures proneness to specific emotions associated with different types of self-blame (guilt, shame, self-contempt/disgust, self-indignation/anger) and blame of others (other-indignation/anger, other-contempt/disgust) whilst controlling for the intensity of unpleasantness.
We confirmed the hypothesis that patients with MDD exhibit an increased self-contempt bias with a reduction in contempt/disgust towards others. Furthermore, they also showed a decreased proneness for indignation/anger towards others.
This corroborates the prediction that vulnerability to MDD is associated with an imbalance of specific self- and other-blaming emotions rather than a general increase in negative emotions. This has important implications for neurocognitive models and calls for novel focussed interventions to rebalance blame in MDD.
有一种有影响力的观点认为，易患重度抑郁症（MDD）与普遍容易体验负面情绪有关。相比之下，归因理论强调了将负面事件归咎于自己而不是他人的重要性。我们之前的探索性研究为归因假设提供了支持，即缓解期 MDD 患者对负面情绪没有总体偏见，但对涉及自责的情绪存在选择性偏见，而对涉及指责他人的情绪则没有。更具体地说，我们发现相对于对他人的轻蔑/厌恶（即自我轻蔑偏见），对他人的轻蔑/厌恶倾向降低。在这里，我们报告了对 MDD 的一般负面与特定归因偏见理论的决定性检验。
我们在以前验证过的道德情绪实验测试中，将无药物治疗缓解的 MDD（n=101）和无 MDD 家族或个人病史的对照组（n=70）进行了比较。该任务衡量了与不同类型自责（内疚、羞耻、自我轻蔑/厌恶、自我愤怒/愤怒）和指责他人（他人愤怒/愤怒、他人轻蔑/厌恶）相关的特定情绪的倾向，同时控制了不愉快的强度。
我们证实了这样的假设，即 MDD 患者表现出自我轻蔑偏见增加，对他人的轻蔑/厌恶减少。此外，他们对他人的愤怒/愤怒的倾向也降低了。
这证实了这样的预测，即易患 MDD 与特定的自我和他人责备情绪的不平衡有关，而不是一般的负面情绪增加。这对神经认知模型具有重要意义，并呼吁采取新的有针对性的干预措施来平衡 MDD 中的责备。
