Depression Proneness and Reactions to a Depressive Stimulus

Abstract

In the context of a project examining depression vulnerability and cigarette smoking, this study tested whether depression-vulnerable people differed from less vulnerable people in their reactions to a depressive stimulus. Regular smokers with a history of depression, but not currently depressed (n = 63) and never-depressed smokers (n = 64) listened to audiotapes of confederates reading depressive and non-depressive scripts, and reported their reactions. Neither history of depression nor selfreported depression proneness predicted reactions to depression. However, depression proneness positively correlated with beliefs about depression contagion. Likewise, stronger depression-related contagion beliefs and lower levels of empathic responding predicted behavioral rejection of the depressive stimulus.

The Effect of Musically Perceived Pleasantness and Unpleasantness on Cognitive Functioning of Patients with Depression: An Experimental Approach

“…Consistent with previous analogue studies of depression rejection (9) , participants responded with greater rejection to a depressive than to a non-depressive stimulus. In the recent study it was described that a depression vulnerable individual or a depressed individual is more likely to repel a sad stimulus (10) . This could be a probable reason of the preadolescent group in the present to perform better in the pleasant musical piece than in the sad musical piece (11) .…”