Choosing to be depressed?

[MeSci]

My immediate thought is 'BS' but I don't have time to read it.

Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression

Yael Millgram1, Jutta Joormann2, Jonathan D. Huppert1, and
Maya Tamir1

1The Hebrew University and 2Yale University

Abstract

Research on deficits in emotion regulation has devoted considerable attention to emotion-regulation strategies. We propose that deficits in emotion regulation may also be related to emotion-regulation goals. We tested this possibility by assessing the direction in which depressed people chose to regulate their emotions (i.e., toward happiness, toward sadness). In three studies, clinically depressed participants were more likely than nondepressed participants to use emotion-regulation strategies in a direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness. This pattern was found when using the regulation strategies of situation selection (Studies 1 and 2) and cognitive reappraisal (Study 3). The findings demonstrate that maladaptive emotion regulation may be linked not only to the means people use to regulate their emotions, but also to the ends toward which those means are directed.

I accessed the full text here.

 

[Sea]

Wow, have they just discovered that a person with depression will tend to think negatively?

(Disclaimer: I didn't read it either but I agree with your BS meter)

 

[evatious]

Ok, I did read through most of that and came away with:

"Future research should also identify why depressed
people are more motivated than nondepressed people to
experience sadness."

Nek minnit... phrenology...

 

[Scarecrow]

I tried to read the paper and had to give up but I have a question. What exactly does depression have to do with sadness?

 

[barbc56]

Wow, have they just discovered that a person with depression will tend to think negatively?

(Disclaimer: I didn't read it either but I agree with your BS meter)

Which is part of the definition of depression. Geese!

I didn’t read it either, but plan to if I can get motivated.

Interesting.

Barb

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I see they have a new translation of the old Assyrian phrase:
Allyo une edtod oiss napou tofit.

 

[Snow Leopard]

The first two studies they found that depressed participants were more likely to choose looking at 'sad' images and 'sad music'. The third study, participants were trained in "cognitive reappraisal".

Firstly: Note that all the participants are female undergraduate students (at elite universities), which can also suggest issues with generalisability.

The experimenter demonstrated how to use reappraisal to either increase or decrease an emotional reaction to a happy image.

Participants were then requested to apply the technique four times: once to increase responses to a sad image,
once to decrease responses to a sad image, once to increase responses to a happy image, and once to
decrease responses to a happy image. During this training phase, the experimenter ensured that participants
understood how to use cognitive reappraisal and that they did so appropriately in all four cases before proceeding
with the study. In the next stage of the study, participants completed a reappraisal selection task. On each trial of the task, one of the six emotional images previously rated by participants was presented on the screen for 500 ms, in random order. Participants were instructed to press one key if they wanted to increase their emotional reaction to the image or another key if they wanted to decrease their emotional reaction. On half the trials, participants pressed
the “1” key to increase their emotional reaction and the “9” key to decrease it, and on half the trials the key
assignments were reversed. Participants were told that people can have various motives for regulating their
emotions. Sometimes they choose to decrease their emotional reactions and sometimes they choose to increase
them, so there are no right or wrong choices. After choosing whether to increase or decrease their
emotional reaction, participants viewed the image for an additional 30 s. Participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal during that time to regulate their emotions in the chosen direction. After they reappraised,
participants rated how sad and happy they felt (1 = not at all, 9 = extremely), briefly described how they reappraised
the image, rated how difficult it was for them to regulate their emotions (1 = not at all, 9 = extremely), and
rated how hard they tried to regulate them (1 = not at all, 9 = extremely). Finally, the experimenter administered the
diagnostic interview.

Follow-up tests confirmed that depressed participants chose to increase emotional reactions to sad images (M = 58%, SE = 6.5%) significantly more often than did nondepressed participants (M = 33%, SE = 6.4%), F(1, 57) = 7.32, p = .009, η2 =.11. The two groups did not differ in their choices to increase or decrease emotional reactions to happy images

We expected that participants who chose to employ reappraisal to increase their emotional responses to sad images (compared with participants who did not) would experience more intense sadness after they engaged in reappraisal. To test this, we first computed the difference between the unregulated response to a sad image and the regulated response to that image, and then we averaged such differences across the sad images. We then correlated this average difference with the percentage of choices to use reappraisal to increase emotional reactions to sad images. As expected, the correlation was moderately strong and statistically significant, r(60) = .42, p < .001, which indicates that the more participants chose to use reappraisal to increase their emotional reactions to sad images, the more their sadness increased after regulation.

But here lies the rub:

We hypothesized that depressed participants chose to increase their emotional reaction to sad images because they were motivated to experience sadness. We tested four additional explanations. First, to test whether the relationship between depression and the selected direction of reappraisal in response to sad images was state-dependent, we ran an ANCOVA with group (depressed, nondepressed) as the independent variable and the percentage of choices to increase emotional reactions to sad images as the dependent variable. We entered concurrent sadness and happiness as covariates. The effect of group remained significant, F(1, 56) = 4.82, p = .032, η2 = .08.

Which leads to these questionable conclusions:

Our findings suggest that regardless of how well depressed people implement emotion-regulation strategies,
they choose to implement them in a direction that is likely to maintain or increase sadness rather than alleviate it.
[...]
Future research should also identify why depressed people are more motivated than nondepressed people to experience sadness. One possibility involves self-verification motives (Swann, 1987). People with low self-esteem were more likely than people with high self-esteem to dampen positive mood (Wood, Heimpel, & Michela, 2003) and less likely to repair sad moods (Wood et al., 2009), partly because such moods were more familiar to them. Likewise, sadness is more familiar to depressed people than to nondepressed people. Therefore, they may be motivated to experience sadness to verify their emotional selves. People with low self-esteem also believed they deserve to feel bad (Wood et al., 2009). Because depression is linked to low self-esteem (e.g., Orth & Robins, 2013), depressed people may similarly believe they deserve to feel sad.
Future research should examine what motives shape emotion-regulation goals in depression.
Future research should also identify the immediate and long-term implications of emotion-regulation goals in depression. Although increasing sadness may confer instrumental benefits (e.g., interpersonal advantages; see Forgas, 2013), it may be maladaptive if it ultimately maintains depressed people’s dysphoria. Indeed, emotion-regulation goals may be responsible for some of the deficits in emotion regulation observed in depression. Future research should also test depressed populations in community samples and use measures other than self-report.

Basically, without any evidence, the authors are assuming that the choice to listen to sad music or look at sad pictures is an unhealthy or maladaptive emotional strategy. Perhaps experiencing deeper sadness is helpful and helps us move on or whatever? Given the lack of longitudinal studies, I believe the above conclusions could be biased.

This is also where I wonder whether there would be any gender or age or other demographic effects that could alter the results.

 

[Scarecrow]

generalsability

Good word! I like it.

Although you left an 'i' out, which threw me a bit. I wondered if you meant 'general stability' which I thought was a bit harsh and uncharacteristically misogynistic.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Good word! I like it.

I blame my spellchecker and my bad eyes!

On the topic of "Cognitive Reappraisal", there are suggestions that this process has gender differences - or that there are gender related biases in self-reporting questionnaires in the studies in question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reappraisal#Gender

It is also suggested that there are age and cultural issues too.

 

[IreneF]

The first two studies they found that depressed participants were more likely to choose looking at 'sad' images and 'sad music'. The third study, participants were trained in "cognitive reappraisal".

Firstly: Note that all the participants are female undergraduate students (at elite universities), which can also suggest issues with generalisability.







But here lies the rub:



Which leads to these questionable conclusions:


Basically, without any evidence, the authors are assuming that the choice to listen to sad music or look at sad pictures is an unhealthy or maladaptive emotional strategy. Perhaps experiencing deeper sadness is helpful and helps us move on or whatever? Given the lack of longitudinal studies, I believe the above conclusions could be biased.

This is also where I wonder whether there would be any gender or age or other demographic effects that could alter the results.

Listening to sad music? Adolescents? How surprising.

 

[IreneF]

Depression is a choice, so if you choose to be mentally ill, it's your own fault. Like "choosing to do" something else?

 

[JaimeS]

This is old research, rephrased and re-packaged insultingly.

Here's the 'old' representation: people have preference for images/words/sounds that resonate with their experience of the world. People who are experiencing a negative mood show preference for words, images and sounds that reflect that negative mood. Last I checked, this was considered an indicator of mood and completely subconscious rather than a 'choice'. That is, if words flashed on a screen in front of a depressed person, they would still focus on the negative words rather than the positive ones, even when that flashing is happening too swiftly to reflect a conscious decision.

I don't have references; this is my impression from a study I read over a decade ago in graduate school while writing a paper on hypothyroidism.

Same distant memory tells me that people in a negative mood respond with disdain and increased negativity to words, images and sounds that run counter to their experience. In other words, forcing a depressed person to listen to uber-cheery music when they feel low may be counter-productive.

Also, they are RIDICULOUS. (Just tell all those depressed people to 'think positive'! Because that would never have occurred to them without your help.) How did this paper get past peer review?

-J

 

[Valentijn]

When I'm in an emo mood, I like emo music. It makes me feel less emo after listening to it for a bit and working through whatever I'm feeling

Whereas being forced to focus on positive thoughts without acknowledging the negative is just going to piss people off and make them more emo.

 

[Keela Too]

Just thinking back to a tough time in my life after a miscarriage... YES I did ponder on sad things then and I'm pretty certain that was part of my coping, re-adjusting, mending and moving on....

Telling me not to think about the sadness of my situation then - and not to allow that sadness to be processed would NOT have helped me at all I think.

Although I do wonder if some folk can get stuck in a loop as it were, and not move out of natural sadness about a situation. Is that when sadness becomes depression?

Or with all the talk of gut biome being linked to depression, is it just that the gut has gone wonky and that is why these depressed folk get stuck in a loop???

The more I think about depression (as opposed to sadness) the more I wonder if there are physical processes behind depression also.

The old "mind over matter" however I think is only useful for things like walking across glass bridges that instinct is telling you is unsafe. It is not so useful for the deeper issues I think... at least not as something that can be pushed as a "cure".

 

[MeSci]

I think that people vary widely in how they deal with low mood. Some people find that crying helps. For me, that makes me feel much worse, as it brings it home more starkly that I have something to be sad about.

I think there used to be a one-size-fits-all treatment for PTSD, which is perhaps in some ways analogous. It was 'exposure therapy'. This still does seem to be the standard approach.

But on a recent radio programme I heard a discussion about a study (I think) which found that this made (some) people worse, and they coped better by suppressing the frightening memories.

This review discusses different ways that have been tried to deal with various psychological illnesses including depression, and states:

it is important to note that in the absence of prospective studies of expressive suppression and psychopathology, the direction of causality cannot be determined.

(my emphasis)

 

[MeSci]

Just thinking back to a tough time in my life after a miscarriage... YES I did ponder on sad things then and I'm pretty certain that was part of my coping, re-adjusting, mending and moving on....

Telling me not to think about the sadness of my situation then - and not to allow that sadness to be processed would NOT have helped me at all I think.

Although I do wonder if some folk can get stuck in a loop as it were, and not move out of natural sadness about a situation. Is that when sadness becomes depression?

Or with all the talk of gut biome being linked to depression, is it just that the gut has gone wonky and that is why these depressed folk get stuck in a loop???

The more I think about depression (as opposed to sadness) the more I wonder if there are physical processes behind depression also.

The old "mind over matter" however I think is only useful for things like walking across glass bridges that instinct is telling you is unsafe. It is not so useful for the deeper issues I think... at least not as something that can be pushed as a "cure".

I think that psychs tend to treat all depression the same, whether it is due to a genetic predisposition, a person's situation, or gut dysbiosis, and the latter is not even on the radar for most psychs.

It's actually similar to modern physical medicine - docs tend not to think of the cause of illness, instead just treating symptoms, which all-too-often doesn't work.

 

[Keela Too]

And this just came up in my Twitter newsfeed - not depression but related I think.....

Scientists shocked to find antibiotics alleviate symptoms of schizophrenia