This research tested the hypothesis that because of mildly and moderately depressed and dysphoric individuals' need to reestablish feelings of control, such individuals will be more likely to effort fully process available social information. Using a cognitive load manipulation up within the correspondence bias paradigm, it was found that depressed subjects were less likely than nondepressed subjects to make correspondent inferences (and more likely to process the available social information), but only under the condition of no cognitive load. The results of the study provide evidence for the motivated effortful processing of social information by moderately depressed individuals.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bargh, J. A. , & Tota, M. E. (1988). Context-dependent automatic processing in depression: Accessibility of negative constructs with regard to self but not others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1129-1146.
2.
Beck,A. T. (1967). Depression: Clinical, experimental, and theoretical aspects. New York: Hoeber.
3.
Conway, M. , & Giannopoulos, C. (1993). Dysphoria and decision making: Limited information use for evaluations of multiattribute targets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 613-623.
4.
Devine, P. G. (1989). Over attribution effect The role of confidence and attributional complicity. Social Psychology Quarty, 5Z149-158.
5.
Dweck, C. S. , & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95, 256-273.
6.
Edwards, J. A. , & Weary, G. (1993). Depression and the impression formation continuum: Piecemeal processing despite the availability of category information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 636-645.
7.
Fein, S. , Hilton, J. L., & Miller, D. T. (1990). Suspicion of ulterior motivation and the correspondence bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 753-764.
8.
Gilbert, D. T. , & Jones, E. E. (1986). Perceiver-induced constraint Interpretations of self-generated reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 269-280.
9.
Gilbert, D. T. , Pelham, B. W., & Krull, D. S. (1988). On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 733-740.
10.
Gilbert, D. T. , Tafarodi, R. W., & Malone, P. S. (1993). You can't not believe everything you read. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 221-233.
11.
Gleicher, F. , & Weary, G. (1991). The effect of depression on the quantity and quality of social inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 105-114.
12.
Gotlib, I. H. , & Asarnow, G. H. (1979). Interpersonal and impersonal problem-solving skills in mildly and dinically depressed university students. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47, 86-95.
13.
Hartlage, S. ,Alloy, L. B., Vazquez, C., & Dykman, B. (1993). Automatic and effortful processing in depression. Psychological BuUetin, 113, 247-278.
14.
Hasher, L. , & Zacks, R. T. (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 356-389.
15.
Hasher, L. , & Zacks, R. T. (1984) . Automatic processing of fundamental information: The case of frequency of occurrence. American Psychologist, 39, 1372-1388.
16.
Hertel, P. T. , & Rude, S. S. (1991a). Depressive deficits in memory: Focusing attention improves subsequent recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 301-309.
17.
Hertel, P. T. , & Rude, S. S. (1991b). Recalling in a state of natural or experimental depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 15, 103-127.
18.
Hildebrand-Saints, L. , & Weary, G. (1989). Depression and social information gathering. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 150-160.
19.
Jones, E. E. (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions. American Psychologist, 34, 107-117.
20.
Jones, E. E. , & Harris, V.A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1-24.
21.
Jones, E. E. , Riggs,J. M., & Quattrone, G. (1979). Observer bias in the attitude attribution paradigm: Effect of time and information order. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1230-1238.
22.
Krull, D. S. (1993). Does the grist change the mill? The effect of the perceiver's inferential goal on the process of social inference. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 340-348.
23.
Marsh, K. L. , & Weary, G. (1989). Depression and attributional complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 325-336.
24.
Martin, L. L. , Seta,J.J., & Crelia, R. A. (1990). Assimilation and contrast as a function of people's willingness and ability to expend effort in forming an impression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 27-37.
25.
McCaul, K. D. (1983). Observer attributions of depressed students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9, 74-82.
26.
Newman, L. S. , & Uleman,J. S. (1989). Spontaneous trait inference. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 155-188). New York: Guilford.
27.
Pittman, T. S. (1993). Control motivation and attitude change. In G. Weary, E Gleicher, & K. L. Marsh (Eds.), Control motivation and social cognition (pp. 157-175). New York: Springer-Verlag.
28.
Pittman, T. S. , & D'Agostino, P. R. (1989). Motivation and cognition: Control deprivation and the nature of subsequent information processing. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 465-480.
29.
Quattrone, G. A. (1982). Over attribution and unit formation: When behavior engulfs the person. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 593-607.
30.
Riskind, J. H. (1989). Will the field ultimately need a more detailed analysis of mood-memory?Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 4, 39-44.
31.
Rosenthal, R. , & Rosnow, R. L. (1985). Contrast analysis: Focused comparisons in the analysis of variancaNew York: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173-220). New York: Academic Press.
33.
Rothbaum, F. ,Weisz,J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 5-37.
34.
Sullivan, M.J. , & Conway, M. (1989). Negative affect leads to low-effort cognition: Attributional processing for observed social behavior. Social Cognition, 7, 315-337.
35.
Trope, Y. (1986). Identification and inferential processes in dispositional attribution. Psychological Revietv, 93, 239-257.
36.
Weary, G. , & Edwards, J. A. (1994). Social cognition and clinical psychology: Anxiety, depression, and the processing of information about others. In R. S. Wyer,Jr., &T. K Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 2, pp. 289-338). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
37.
Weary, G. , Elbin, S. D., & Hill, M. G. (1987). Attribution and social comparison processes in depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 605-610.
38.
Weary, G. , Jordan, J. S., & Hill, M. G. (1985). The attributional norm of internality and depressive sensitivity to social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1283-1293.
39.
Weary, G. , Marsh, K. L., Gleicher, E., & Edwards, J. A. (1993). Socialcognitive consequences of depression. In G. Weary, F. Gleicher, & K. L. Marsh (Eds.), Control motivation and social cognition (pp. 255-287). New York: Springer-Verlag.
40.
Weary, G. , & Williams, J. P. (1990). Depressive self-presentation: Beyond self-handicapping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 892-898.
41.
Winter, L. , & Uleman,J. S. (1984). When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 237-252.
42.
Winter, L. , Uleman, J. S., & Cunniff, C. (1985). How automatic are social judgments?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 904-917.
