Despite growing evidence that depression is linked with self-focused attention, little is known about how depressed individuals become self-focused or, more generally, about what arouses self-focus in everyday life. Two experiments examined the hypothesis that affect itself induces self-focused attention. In Experiment 1, moods were manipulated with an imagination mood-induction procedure. Sad-induction Ss became higher in self-focus than did neutral-induction Ss. Experiment 2 replicated this effect for sad moods by means of a musical mood-induction procedure and different measures of self-focus. However, Experiment 2 failed to support the hypothesis that happy moods induce self-focus. The results have implications for mood-induction research, self-focused attention, and recent models of depression.

Several questions concerning the relation between self-focused attention and depressed mood were examined: (a) Does the association involve global negative affect, rather than sadness per se? (b) is self-focus associated with specific negative affects other than sadness? and (c) does the association occur at the between-subjects or within-subject level? Also hypothesized was that self-focus is associated with coping responses that may perpetuate negative mood. In an idiographic/nomothetic design, 40 male community residents completed daily reports for 30 days. Results suggest that self-focus is linked with global negative mood as well as specific negative affects other than sadness and that the association occurs on a between-persons, rather than a day-to-day within-person, basis. In addition, highly self-focused men reported using passive and ruminative coping styles, which in turn were associated with distressed affect.

Research addressing the influence of happy mood on self-focused attention has yielded inconsistent results. Some studies found that happy mood decreased self-focus relative to sad mood. Other studies did not detect a significant difference between happy and neutral mood, and still other studies found that happy mood, relative to neutral mood, increased self-focus. These investigations have potential shortcomings, such as an insufficiently powerful happy mood induction and a confound between visualization mood inductions and self-focus itself. The present experiment addressed these shortcomings by inducing mood via musical selections, equalizing the approximate potency between happy and sad moods, and using a within-participants design. Relative to neutral mood, happy mood decreased self-focused attention.

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Stunkard and Messick's (1985) Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) has been criticized as being statistically and conceptually flawed. In the present study, the interrelationships among the factors of the TFEQ and their association with theoretically relevant predictors of restrained eating were examined. The TFEQ was found to consist of 2 relatively independent second-order factors: Cognitive Restraint and Impulsive Eating. These second-order factors were predicted by precipitants of eating and aspects of restraint in a conceptually reasonable manner.The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) was designed to measure three dimensions of eating: cognitive restraint, disinhibition of control, and hunger (Stunkard, 1981;Stunkard & Messick, 1985). Although the TFEQ reportedly rectified certain inadequacies of the Restraint Scale (Herman & Mack, 1975), an instrument designed to identify chronic dieters who may be susceptible to binge eating, it has been criticized on several points. The TFEQ reportedly does not measure a unitary construct; violates certain theoretical assumptions regarding the relationships among restraint, disinhibition, and hunger; and does not predict which subjects will binge in experimental tests of counterregulatory eating (Heatherton, Herman, Polivy, King, & McGree, 1988).Given these criticisms, we attempted to achievePortions of this research were supported by National Institute on Alcoholism Grant RO1-AA07595 to R. Lorraine Collins. We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.