Effects of self-esteem manipulation on arousal and reactions to sad models in depressed and nondepressed college students.

Abstract

Depressed and nondepressed male and female college students were given spurious feedback, either positive or negative, about the results of personality tests. They then watched a film of an intensive encounter group. Psychophysiological reactions to both feedback and observation of sad film models were recorded. Depressed subjects showed greater arousal than nondepressed subjects only after negative feedback. Depressed subjects reacted emotionally to the sad models after negative feedback; nondepressed subjects, after positive feedback. The arousal results were viewed as indicating that depressed subjects were particularly reactive to a "loss" of self-esteem.Low self-esteem has often been regarded as a distinctive quality of depression (Beck, 1967;Mendels, 1970), and yet previous research has not unequivocally demonstrated that depressed persons are any more affected by events that presumably diminish self-esteem than are nondepressed persons (Coleman, 1975;Flippo & Lewinsohn, 1971). The present study, unlike previous investigations, both directly manipulates self-esteem and employs a psychophysiological measure of consequent response to determine whether depressed college students were, in fact, unusually vulnerable to a "loss" of self-esteem. Toward that end, mildly depressed and nondepressed subjects were given spurious feedback, which was either positive or negative in nature, about the "results" of their personality tests (cf. Jacobs, Berscheid, & Walster, 1971). The hypothesis tested was that depressed subjects would exhibit greater psychophysiological arousal than nondepressed subjects following negative feedback but not after positive feedback.If depressed persons are more viscerally re-We are indebted to David J. Majernik of the

Dysphoria is associated with reduced cardiac vagal withdrawal during the imagery of pleasant scripts: Evidence for the positive attenuation hypothesis

“…Although the constructs that underlie mood -diffuse feeling states that are not necessarily elicited by specific events or objects (Watson, 2000) -and emotions -action dispositions that prepare the organism to respond adaptively to meaningful stimuli (Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989;Lang, 1995) -are distinguishable, they have been negative scenario (Sigmon & Nelson-Gray, 1992). Similarly, studies examining emotional reactivity in undergraduates scoring high on depression measures (i.e., with dysphoria) have reported greater skin conductance during the presentation of an aversive stimulus (Lewinsohn, Lobitz, & Wilson, 1973) or in response to a negative feedback about personality characteristics (Golin, Hartman, Klatt, Munz, & Wolfgang, 1977). There is also converging evidence that undergraduates with vs. without dysphoria exhibit greater affective potentiation of the eyeblink startle reflex.…”

Cognitive theory and the generality of pessimism among depressed persons.

“…The finding that depressed subjects did not show a greater reaction than nondepressed subjects to failure to attain the goal is in accord with other results based on self-report data but is not consistent with results based on psychophysiological measures of emotionality (cf. Golin et al, 1977).…”

Mood Symptoms and Emotional Responsiveness to Threat in School-Aged Children

“…Clinically depressed adults and adults with remitted clinical depression show greater galvanic skin response when hearing vignettes describing negative social scenes (Sigmon & Nelson-Gray, 1992). In addition, college students with greater depressive symptoms show greater physiological arousal in terms of galvanic skin responses following receipt of negative feedback (Golin, Hartman, Klatt, Munz, & Wolfgang, 1977) and during the presentation of mild electric shock (Lewinsohn, Lobitz, & Wilson, 1973). In turn, a large and growing literature documents increased amygdala activation in depressed adults in response to the presentation of negative emotional information (Mayberg et al, 1999; Sheline et al, 2001; Siegle, Steinhauer, Thase, Stenger, & Carter, 2002; Siegle, Thompson, Carter, Steinhauer, & Thase, 2007).…”