Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 26;19(8):e0307035. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307035. eCollection 2024.
Negative social expectations are a key symptom of depression. It has been suggested that individuals with depressive symptoms tend to maintain these expectations by devaluing new experiences that do not fit prior expectations. However, our understanding of the role of such "immunizing" cognition in response to unexpected social feedback in depression, as well as the cognitive mechanisms involved, remains limited. This study investigated the association between depressive symptoms and the cognitive processing of unexpected positive or negative social feedback using a novel, video-based approach featuring naturalistic social stimuli in a subclinical online sample (N = 155). We also examined how surprise levels, feedback acceptance and immunizing cognition relate to other cognitive processes, such as attributional style and rumination, using cross-sectional network analyses. Robust multiple linear regression analyses revealed that depressive symptoms were associated with higher surprise levels (R2adj. = .27), lower feedback acceptance (R2adj. = .19), and higher levels of immunizing cognition (R2adj. = .09) in response to unexpected positive social feedback, but only partially to unexpected negative social feedback. The network analysis suggested that self-efficacy expectations for coping with negative feelings and acceptance of positive social feedback had the strongest expected influence on the different cognitive processes. Our study highlights the challenges that individuals with depressive symptoms face in utilizing positive social feedback to modify negative expectations. For clinicians, our findings suggest the importance of promoting acceptance of positive social feedback, while simultaneously inhibiting immunizing cognition and avoiding the use of overly positive feedback.
负面的社会期望是抑郁症的一个主要症状。有研究表明，有抑郁症状的个体往往通过贬低不符合先前期望的新体验来维持这些期望。然而，我们对这种“免疫”认知在应对抑郁时意外的社会反馈中的作用以及所涉及的认知机制的理解仍然有限。本研究使用一种新的基于视频的方法，在亚临床在线样本（N=155）中使用自然主义的社会刺激，研究了抑郁症状与对意外的积极或消极社会反馈的认知加工之间的关联。我们还使用横断面网络分析研究了惊喜程度、反馈接受和免疫认知与归因风格和反刍等其他认知过程的关系。稳健的多元线性回归分析表明，抑郁症状与对意外积极社会反馈的更高的惊喜程度（调整后的 R2=.27）、更低的反馈接受（调整后的 R2=.19）和更高的免疫认知（调整后的 R2=.09）相关，但对意外消极社会反馈的影响仅部分相关。网络分析表明，应对负面情绪的自我效能期望和对积极社会反馈的接受对不同的认知过程有最强的预期影响。我们的研究强调了有抑郁症状的个体在利用积极的社会反馈来修正消极期望时所面临的挑战。对于临床医生来说，我们的发现表明促进对积极社会反馈的接受、同时抑制免疫认知和避免使用过于积极的反馈的重要性。
