Perception of self and other in major depression.

Abstract

Previous research on the nature of person perception in depression has been inconclusive. This investigation differs from earlier studies in that extensive free-response descriptions of other people and self were collected from patients with major depression and from nonpsychiatric control Ss. In comparison with control Ss, depressed patients described fewer positive aspects not only of self but also of parents and significant others and reported more negative aspects of these people. Cluster analysis (HICLAS) also showed that more cognitive differentiation of negative self-perceptions (negative self-complexity) was characteristic of clinical depression. In both control Ss and patients, a positive (or negative) view of self was highly correlated (.85 or more) with a positive (or negative) view of parents and significant others. These correlations were significantly stronger than those between self and less important others.

Evidence for an association of the big five personality factors with recurrence of depressive symptoms in later life

“…The core of the personality trait neuroticism is conceptualized to be a sensitive to negative stimuli (Tellegen, 1985), thereby causing high trait scorers to experience a broad range of negative moods, including fear/anxiety, sadness/depression, guilt, hostility and self-dissatisfaction (Watson and Clark, 1984). A wide range of non-mood variables are related to this affective core, including negative cognitions (Clark et al, 1990), somatic complaints (Watson and Pennebaker, 1989) and negativistic appraisal of self and others (Gara et al, 1993). These characteristics form a highly pervasive dimension of subjective experience, and they are strongly related with the onset and course of depression.…”

Perceiving others’ personalities: Examining the dimensionality, assumed similarity to the self, and stability of perceiver effects.

“…Research on narcissism has documented systematic distortions in narcissists' selfperceptions (John & Robins, 1994), and analogous biases in perceiver effects may be an important part of the cognitive framework underpinning other forms of psychopathology. For example, distorted perceptions of others have been associated with both borderline personality disorder (Benjamin & Wonderlich, 1994), depressive disorder (Gara et al, 1993), and conduct disorder (Dodge, 1993). The finding that perceiver effects have a multidimensional structure may provide a framework for organizing this literature.…”

“…A more nuanced approach, and one that accounts for the finding that perceiver effects are context dependent, would be to compare perceiver effects formed in relation to different sets of others across different contexts. For example, some research has suggested that depressed individuals might be more likely to use social projection, and therefore to form more negative perceptions of others, in contexts in which they feel close to or dependent on others (Gara et al, 1993). Similarly, the correlations between attachment style and perceiver effects might have been stronger in a context in which attachment concerns were more relevant and the attachment system was more highly activated, such as in groups of people who expected to rely on one another for acceptance and support.…”

“…Methodologically, many studies rely on informant reports as a data source (Kraemer et al, 2003;Vazire, 2006), and a model of perceiver effects can enhance researchers' understanding of how such reports are formed. Substantively, biases and distortions in perceptions of others have been theorized to be part of a variety of intra-and interpersonal processes, individual differences, and forms of psychopathology (e.g., Benjamin & Wonderlich, 1994;Gara et al, 1993). We focused our investigation on interpersonal perceptions of the personality traits from the Big Five model (John & Srivastava, 1999).…”

Hierarchical classification and the integration of self-structure in late adolescence

“…Gara, et al, 1987;Gara et al, 1989;Robey et al, 1989;Gara et al, 1993). In one cross-sectional study of non-clinical subjects aged 10-27 years, Haviland et al (1994) used HICLAS to study the place of emotion in the self-structure models of adolescents.…”