Martin-Garcia Oscar, Blanco Ivan, Sanchez-Lopez Alvaro
Department of Personality, Evaluation and Clinical Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Front Psychiatry. 2024 Dec 20;15:1502130. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1502130. eCollection 2024.
In today's fast-paced world, depression and anxiety are the most prevalent health problems, generating high economic and social burdens. Interpretation biases seem to play a pivotal role in this emotional problems, influencing how individuals interpret emotionally ambiguous information. These interpretation biases can emerge due to the activation of latent schemas related to how individuals perceive themselves. Therefore, integrating the study of cognitive and self-discrepancy models can offer a comprehensive approach to better understanding the onset or maintenance of emotional symptoms, through their relationship with interpretation biases. In this paper, we aimed to test whether differences in self-perception might act like a cognitive schema that activate cognitive bias, influencing information processing and predicting emotional symptoms.
Seventy-three undergraduates completed two different experimental tasks, evaluating self-discrepancies and self-referential negative interpretation bias. Moreover, emotional symptoms were collected after completing the tasks and 1-2 months after, prior to coping with a natural stressor (exam period). The main analyses comprised mediational models, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, with the aim to test whether interpretation bias might act like a mediator in the relation between self-discrepancies and emotional symptoms.
First, the results showed significant correlations between higher levels of self-discrepancies (actual-ideal and actual-ought) and higher levels of emotional symptoms (depression and anxiety), as well as with higher negative interpretation biases. Further, cross-sectional mediational models showed that negative interpretation biases partially mediated the relationship between self-discrepancies and emotional symptoms. As for the longitudinal mediation analysis, interpretation bias only mediated the specific relation between actual-ideal self-discrepancies and increases in anxiety symptoms, while the rest of the indirect effects were not significant.
These results suggest that self-discrepancies could be understood as indices of the activation of latent cognitive schemas, which would influence subsequent stages of information processing, such as negative interpretations of ambiguous information, partly accounting for the emergence and/or maintenance of emotional symptoms.
在当今快节奏的世界中，抑郁和焦虑是最普遍的健康问题，产生了高昂的经济和社会负担。解释偏差似乎在这些情绪问题中起着关键作用，影响着个体如何解释情绪上模糊的信息。这些解释偏差可能由于与个体自我认知方式相关的潜在图式的激活而出现。因此，整合认知和自我差异模型的研究可以提供一种全面的方法，通过它们与解释偏差的关系，更好地理解情绪症状的发作或维持。在本文中，我们旨在测试自我认知的差异是否可能像激活认知偏差的认知图式一样，影响信息处理并预测情绪症状。
73名本科生完成了两项不同的实验任务，评估自我差异和自我参照的负性解释偏差。此外，在完成任务后以及在应对自然应激源（考试期间）之前的1至2个月收集情绪症状。主要分析包括横断面和纵向的中介模型，目的是测试解释偏差是否可能在自我差异与情绪症状之间的关系中起中介作用。
首先，结果显示较高水平的自我差异（实际-理想和实际-应该）与较高水平的情绪症状（抑郁和焦虑）以及较高的负性解释偏差之间存在显著相关性。此外，横断面中介模型表明，负性解释偏差部分中介了自我差异与情绪症状之间的关系。至于纵向中介分析，解释偏差仅中介了实际-理想自我差异与焦虑症状增加之间的特定关系，而其余间接效应不显著。
这些结果表明，自我差异可以被理解为潜在认知图式激活的指标，这将影响信息处理的后续阶段，例如对模糊信息的负性解释，部分解释了情绪症状的出现和/或维持。
