Proneness to Decreased Negative Emotions in Major Depressive Disorder when Blaming Others rather than Oneself

Abstract

Background: One widespread view holds that vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD) is linked to overall increases in negative emotionality. In contrast, cognitive attribution theories emphasize the importance of blaming oneself rather than others for negative events. Thus far, the contrasting predictions of these models have not been directly compared. Following the attributional perspective, we tested the hypothesis that people with remitted MDD show no overall bias towards negative emotions, but a selective bias towards self-blaming emotions relative to those emotions associated with blaming others. Sampling and Methods: We compared a remitted MDD and a control group on a novel experimental test that allowed us to directly compare proneness to specific emotions associated with different types of self-blame (guilt, shame, self-contempt/disgust) and blame of others (other-indignation/anger, other-contempt/disgust) whilst controlling for negative valence and medication status, and excluding comorbidity. Results: In agreement with our hypothesis, individuals with remitted MDD exhibited an increased self-contempt bias (difference between contempt/disgust towards self and others) but no increased proneness to any other negative emotion or overall increases in perceived negative valence of stimuli. Moreover, the remitted MDD group exhibited reduced contempt/disgust towards others. Conclusions: Our results corroborate the prediction that vulnerability to MDD is associated with an imbalance of specific self- and other-blaming emotions rather than a general increase in negative emotions. Based on the composition of our sample, we speculate that self-contempt bias may be particularly characteristic of melancholic MDD subtypes and could be useful for stratification of depression in the future.

Theory of mind, empathy and moral emotions in patients with affective disorders

“…Researchers noted that increased tendency to blame ourselves and reduced -to apportion blame to others, may be associated with susceptibility to depression. Similar conclusions were drawn by the team of Green [52], postulating that not only the dominance of negative emotionality, but a certain imbalance in this area (between the tendency to blame ourselves and the tendency to blame other people) can be a predictor of the development of a depressive episode.…”

“…However, drawing conclusions on this topic requires some caution: it turns out that the results are largely dependent on what aspect of ToM was measured, and what tool was selected for this purpose. Many studies, in which the functioning of ToM in remitted subjects was measured using verbal tasks, indicated the moderately or highly severe dysfunction in the area of reading other people's mental Theory of mind, empathy and moral emotions in patients with affective disorders 51 Archives of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 2015; 2: [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] states. On the other hand, in cases where the investigators used the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test [22] (which relies on the recognition of emotions presented in photographs depicting human eyes), the observed dysfunctions were very small -sometimes non-significant.…”

“…To summarize the above descriptions of the constructs included in the analysis: theory of mind, empathy and selected moral emotions, it is worth noting that the knowledge of specifics of each of them in individuals struggling with affective disorders, can help: (1) to understand the mechanisms behind their -often disturbedsocial functioning, and thus -(2) to better understand some of the reactions of patients, and, according to some studies [29,51,52], (3) to estimate the risk of first appearance or recurrence of disease's symptoms. Hence, conducting research moving this subject seems to be significant both for the sake of science and clinical practice.…”

Personal resilience and coping Part II: Identifying resilience and coping among U.S. military service members and veterans with implications for work

“…Self-blame is most often understood to be a dysfunctional coping strategy as it does not assist in alleviating either the emotional distress or the cause of the stress, but instead focuses one's attention elsewhere (on themselves) and increases resultant stress and suffering. For example, high levels of self-blame are associated with vulnerability to major depressive disorder [43] and with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) [44]. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5) acknowledges "persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others" among the diagnostic criteria of PTSD [45] (309.81(F43.10), p.272).…”

Neural Foundation of Morality

“…The right uncinate fascicle, a white matter tract connecting temporal poles, ventral frontal cortices, and subcortical structures, was found to show decreased structural connectivity in people with psychopathy (Eslinger et al, 2004), which may be a result of the cortical changes described above or vice versa. MDD is associated with overgeneral forms of empathybased interpersonal guilt (e.g., 'feeling responsible for everything,' (O'Connor et al, 2002)), which remained detectable on remission of symptoms in a group of primarily melancholic subtype patients (Green et al, 2013) suggesting this as a trait vulnerability factor. One hypothesis is that increased guilt proneness in MDD may have an influence on helping behavior outside of depressive episodes (O'Connor et al, 2002).…”