Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics

Abstract

Communicating emotional experiences effectively is critical for adaptive functioning and personal and interpersonal well-being. Here, we investigated whether variability in depression symptoms undermines people’s ability to express their emotions to others (“emotional expressive accuracy”) and how those communication dynamics influence other’s impressions. In Phase 1, 49 “targets” were videotaped describing significant autobiographical events; they then watched their videos and continuously rated how positive/negative they were feeling throughout the narrative. In Phase 2, 171 “perceivers” watched subsets of videos from targets and similarly rated each target’s affect. Results from 1,645 unique target–perceiver observations indicate a link between target’s depressive symptoms and impaired emotional expressive accuracy for positive events, B = −0.002, t(1,501) = −3.152, p = .002. Likewise, more depressive targets were rated less favorably by perceivers, again when sharing positive events, B = −0.012, t(1,511) = −10.145, p < .001. Given the beneficial effects of “capitalization”—sharing positive experiences with others—these findings may illustrate one link between depressive symptoms and impoverished relationships.