The hypothesis was that dysphoric individuals' greater self focused attention reflects attempts at self-understanding as opposed to awareness of their thoughts and feelings. Subjects in Study I completed the short form of the Beck Depression Inventory and the Self Consciousness Scale. As expected, more-dysphoric subjects reported higher self-reflectiveness but not higher internal state awareness. This finding was replicated in Study 2, in which subjects also completed the Attributional Complexity Scale; other results suggest that dysphoric individuals' attainment of higher scores on the Attributional Complexity Scale, which includes self-referent items, is intrinsically related to their tendency for self reflection. Dysphoric individuals may engage in self-reflection because of poor understanding of self; various indexes of maladjustment seem associated with a poor understanding of self Other possible causal links are discussed
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Baumgardner, A. H. (1990). To know oneself is to like oneself. Self-certainty and self-affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1062-1072.
2.
Beck, A. T. (1967). Depression Clinical, experimental, and theoretical aspects. New YorkHarper & Row.
3.
Beck, A. T. , & Beck, R. W. (1972). Screening depressed patients in family practice. Postgraduate Medicine, 52, 81-85.
4.
Campbell, J. D. (1990). Self-esteem and clarity of the self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 538-549.
5.
Carver, C. S. (1979). A cybernetic model of self-attention processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1251-1281.
6.
Carver, C. S. , & Scheier, M. F. (1990). Origins and functions of positive and negative affect A control-process view. Psychological Review, 97, 19-35.
7.
Conway, M. (1992). [Dysphoria and responses to the Trait-Meta-Mood-Scale in a sample of Concordia University undergraduates]. Unpublished raw data.
8.
Dykman, B. M. , Abramson, L Y., Alloy, L. B., & Hartlage, S. (1989). Processing of ambiguous and unambiguous feedback by depressed and nondepressed college students: Schematic biases and their implications for depressive realism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 431-445.
9.
Exner, J. E. (1973). The self-focus sentence completion: A study of egocentricity. Journal of Personality Assessment37, 437-455.
10.
Eysenck, H. J. (1973). A short questionnaire for the measurement of two dimensions of personality. In H. J. Eysenck, Eysenck on extraversion. New York: Halsted.
11.
Eysenck, H. J. , & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1967). Eysench Personality Inventory manual. San Diego, CA: Educational and Industrial Testing Service.
12.
Fenigstein, A. , Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522-527.
13.
Fletcher, G. J. O. , Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson, D., & Reeder, G. D. (1986). Attributional complexity: An individual differences measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 875-884.
14.
Flett, G. L. , Pliner, P., & Blankstein, K. R. (1989). Depression and components of attributional complexity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 757-764.
15.
Haaga, DAF. , Dyck, M. J., & Ernst, D. (1991). Empirical status of cognitive theory of depression. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 215-236.
16.
Ingram, RE. (1990). Self-focused attention in clinical disorders: Review and a conceptual model. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 156-176.
17.
Ingram, R. E. , Lumry, A., Cruet, D., & Sieber, W. (1987). Attentional processes in attentional disorders. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 11, 351-360.
18.
Ingram, R. E. , & Smith, T. W. (1984). Depression and internal versus external focus of attention. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 8, 139-152.
19.
Kendall, P. , Hollon, S., Beck, A., Hammen, C., & Ingram, R. E. (1987). Issues and recommendations regarding use of the Beck Depression Inventory. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 11, 289-299.
20.
Larsen, RJ. , & Cowan, G. S. (1988). Internal focus of attention and depression: A study of daily experience. Motivation and Emotion, 12, 237-249.
21.
Marsh, K L. , & Weary, G. (1989). Depression and attributional complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 325-336.
22.
Mittal, B. , & Balasubramanian, S. K. (1987). Testing the dimensionality of the self-consciousness scalesJournal of Personality Assessment51, 53-68.
23.
Salovey, P. , Mayer, J. D., Goldman, S., Turvey, C., & Palfai, T. P. (1991). The Trait Meta-Mood Scale: A measure of mood attention, clarity and maintenance/repair-three components of emotional intelligence Unpublished manuscript, Yale University.
24.
Turner, R. , Scheier, M., Carver, C., & Ickes, W. (1978). Correlates of self-consciousness. Journal of Personality Assessment42, 285-289.
25.
Wicklund, R. A. (1975). Objective self-awareness. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 233-275). New York: Academic Press.
26.
Wood, J. V. , Saltzberg, J. A., & Goldsamt, L. A. (1990). Does affect induce self-focused attention? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 899-908.
