Duan Suqian, Lawrence Andrew, Valmaggia Lucia, Moll Jorge, Zahn Roland
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, King's College London, London, UK.
Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), 22280-080, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
J Psychiatr Res. 2021 Nov 27;145:70-76. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.11.043.
Biases towards self-blaming emotions, such as self-contempt/disgust, were previously associated with vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD). Self-blaming emotions are thought to prompt specific action tendencies (e.g. "feeling like hiding"), which are likely to be more important for psychosocial functioning than the emotions themselves. Systematic investigations, however, of these action tendencies in MDD are lacking. Here, we investigated the role of blame-related action tendencies for MDD vulnerability and their relationship with blame-related emotions. 76 participants with medication-free remitted MDD and 44 healthy control (HC) participants without a history of MDD completed the value-related moral sentiment task, which measured their blame-related emotions during hypothetical social interactions and a novel task to assess their blame-related action tendencies (feeling like hiding, apologising, creating a distance from oneself, attacking oneself, creating a distance from other, attacking other, no action). As predicted, the MDD group showed a maladaptive profile of action tendencies: a higher proneness to feeling like hiding and creating a distance from themselves compared with the HC group. In contrast, feeling like apologising was less common in the MDD than the HC group. Apologising for one's wrongdoing was associated with all self-blaming emotions including shame, guilt, self-contempt/disgust and self-indignation. Hiding was associated with both shame and guilt. Our study shows that MDD vulnerability was associated with specific maladaptive action tendencies which were independent of the type of emotion, thus unveiling novel cognitive markers and neurocognitive treatment targets.
对自责情绪（如自我轻蔑/厌恶）的偏向，此前被认为与重度抑郁症（MDD）的易感性有关。自责情绪被认为会引发特定的行动倾向（例如“想要躲藏”），而这些行动倾向对心理社会功能的影响可能比情绪本身更为重要。然而，针对MDD中这些行动倾向的系统性研究却很缺乏。在此，我们研究了与责备相关的行动倾向在MDD易感性中的作用及其与责备相关情绪的关系。76名未服用药物且处于缓解期的MDD患者和44名无MDD病史的健康对照（HC）参与者完成了与价值观相关的道德情感任务，该任务测量了他们在假设的社交互动中的责备相关情绪，以及一项用于评估他们与责备相关的行动倾向的新任务（想要躲藏、道歉、与自己保持距离、攻击自己、与他人保持距离、攻击他人、无行动）。正如预期的那样，MDD组表现出一种适应不良的行动倾向特征：与HC组相比，更倾向于想要躲藏和与自己保持距离。相比之下，MDD组中想要道歉的情况比HC组少见。为自己的错误行为道歉与所有自责情绪有关，包括羞耻、内疚、自我轻蔑/厌恶和自我愤慨。躲藏与羞耻和内疚都有关。我们的研究表明，MDD易感性与特定的适应不良行动倾向有关，这些倾向独立于情绪类型，从而揭示了新的认知标志物和神经认知治疗靶点。
