A longitudinal examination of the interplay between personality vulnerability and need‐based experiences in adolescents' depressive symptoms

Abstract

Adolescence is marked by an increased susceptibility to depressive symptoms, which has important repercussions for adolescents' personal, social, and educational development (Costello, Copeland, & Angold, 2011). Given that vulnerability to psychological difficulties is still susceptible to change in adolescence (Hauser, Allen, & Golden, 2006), it is important to gain more insight into factors that increase the risk for depressive symptoms in this developmental period. Such insight is needed to improve prevention programs and to refine etiological models of mental health problems. One influential body of research on vulnerability to psychopathology, and to depression more specifically, is grounded in Blatt's (2004; Luyten & Blatt, 2013) two-polarities model of personality development. This research has

Do Psychological Needs Play a Role in Times of Uncertainty? Associations with Well-Being During the COVID-19 Crisis

“…Consistent with the dual process model (Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013 ), need satisfaction was found to contribute primarily to individuals’ psychological well-being, as indexed by life satisfaction (Tay & Diener, 2011 ), vitality (Ryan & Deci, 2008 ), and meaning (Martela et al, 2018 ) as well as to their physical health, as indexed by increased longevity (Weinstein et al, 2019 ). In contrast, need frustration relates primarily to ill-being as indexed by symptoms of anxiety, stress, and depression (e.g., Bartholomew et al, 2011 ; Vandenkerckhove et al, 2020 ), while also predicting poor physical health, as indexed by poorer sleep quality (Campbell et al, 2017b ) and greater stress reactivity (Reeve & Tseng, 2011 ).…”

The power of everyday peer relatedness in predicting subjective well-being and adjustment after secondary school transition

“…However, the authors did not report findings on relatedness frustration in particular and did not assess need satisfaction or externalizing problems. Overcoming these limitations, Vandenkerckhove et al (2019) found relatedness frustration to be associated with internalizing problems but not externalizing problems, while they did not find relatedness satisfaction to be linked to either. In this study, relatedness satisfaction is associated with fewer internalizing problems (i.e., emotional symptoms and peer problems) and relatedness frustration is linked to more externalizing problems (i.e.,…”

“…However, empirical evidence is still inconclusive on whether they differentially predict positive and negative outcomes in children and young adolescents. Studies have found relatedness satisfaction to be particularly predictive of adaptive outcomes such as positive affect (Schmidt et al, 2019), self-esteem (Schmidt et al, 2020b), and school satisfaction (Tian et al, 2018), whereas relatedness frustration was primarily associated with adverse outcomes such as negative affect (Schmidt et al, 2020a), maladjustment (Rodríguez-Meirinhos et al, 2020), or internalizing problems (Vandenkerckhove et al, 2019). However, other studies demonstrate global rather than differential effects: Earl et al (2019) found relatedness satisfaction to positively predict positive affect as well as vitality and to be negatively related to negative affect, while Bartholomew et al (2011) found relatedness satisfaction and frustration to both significantly predict vitality and exhaustion in the expected directions.…”

“…The subscales of emotional symptoms and peer problems represent indicators of internalizing problems, while hyperactivity and conduct problems are indicators of externalizing problems (Goodman et al, 2010). Recent work suggested need frustration as the explanatory mechanism linking individual features to behavioral and psychopathological problems (Campbell et al, 2018;Vandenkerckhove et al, 2019). For instance, Campbell et al (2018) showed that perfectionism predicted need frustration, which was related to internalizing psychopathology.…”

Daily ups and downs in adolescents’ depressive symptoms: The role of daily self‐criticism, dependency and basic psychological needs

“…Confronted with need frustration, adolescents whose personality vulnerability is heightened in the day would thus be less resilient against and more susceptible to the risks associated with need frustration and low need satisfaction. Although this possibility of moderation is theoretically plausible, the few studies to date that examined this possibility did not find support for it (Vandenkerckhove et al, 2020; Vandenkerckhove, Soenens, et al, 2019). None of these studies, however, examined the interactive interplay between Blatt's personality dimensions and need‐based experiences on a daily basis (instead focusing on stable interindividual differences or long‐term change).…”