Introduction: According to the interpersonal model of depression, individuals with depression engage in excessive reassurance-seeking (ERS) about others’ beliefs regarding their self-worth, which can ultimately result in interpersonal rejection. We present the novel hypothesis that maladaptive ERS behaviors in depression may be driven by difficulties with “theory of mind”—the foundational ability to decode and reason about others’ mental states. Method: Participants included 31 young adults in a current episode of a unipolar depressive disorder, and 91 never-depressed adults. Theory of mind was assessed with standard, objective laboratory tasks. Stressful life events were assessed with a gold-standard contextual interview and independent rating system. Results: Consistent with hypotheses, in the depressed group only, lower accuracy of theory of mind decoding was associated with greater ERS, which was significantly associated with exposure to greater interpersonal, but not non-interpersonal, stress. Surprisingly, higher accuracy of theory of mind reasoning was associated with greater ERS. Discussion: The intriguing dissociation is discussed in terms of expanding the interpersonal model of depression to include the foundational social cognitive processes that underlie effective social communication.
This study examined excessive reassurance seeking (or positive feedback seeking; PFS) and negative feedback seeking (NFS) in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), or no history of mental health difficulties. A 2-week daily diary method was used to examine potential group differences in the frequency, topics, and targets of PFS and NFS. The SAD and GAD groups reported significantly higher feedback seeking (FS) than the healthy group on self-report questionnaires. The most common targets of FS in each group were other people (e.g., romantic partner, family members). According to diary data, there were no significant group differences in the frequency of PFS, NFS, overall FS, or overall FS adjusted for self-reported compliance with diary completion (after applying Bonferroni correction). There were also no significant group differences in FS topics according to diary data. Future research directions and potential implications of these findings are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.