A slightly depressed person could be encouraged with a few kind words. However, People with clinical depression prefer to hear negative things. The study described below suggests that depressed people not only avoid favorable comments but actively seek out feedback negative.
The authors of the study have found that People with depression tend to engage in environments that support their negative views of themselves. These depressed people tend to distance themselves from those who try to help them with behaviors such as:
- Hostile and negative self-talk
- Lack of response.
- They reduce eye contact.
- Negative facial gestures.
- Slower and more monotonous speeches.
With this study, the authors provide evidence suggesting that people with depression sometimes engage in these behaviors to provoke negative comments.
For their study, the authors hired three groups of participants:
- People who suffered from clinical depression (28).
- People who were not depressed and had high self-esteem (20).
- People who were not depressed but had low self-esteem (25).
Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire packet and were told that their response would be the basis for an evaluation of the personality. That evaluation would be done by graduate students.
Participants were later given what they thought were summaries of the graduate students' evaluations of their personality. But in reality, everyone has the same two summaries, one of which was positive ("this person seems well-adjusted, confident, happy, etc."), and the other negative ("this person seems sad"). , insecure, uncomfortable, etc. "). They were then asked to choose which version of the positive and negative evaluations they wanted to read. They were also asked to rate the accuracy of the two summaries.
Only 25% of the high self-esteem group chose the unfavorable evaluation over the favorable one. 64% percent of participants with low self-esteem but who were not depressed chose the negative evaluation. In contrast, 82% of depressed participants chose the unfavorable evaluation.
Of the three groups, only the depressed participants rated the negative evaluation as more accurate.
Reference:
R. Brian Giesler, Robert A. Josephs, Ph.D., and William B. Swann, Jr., Ph.D. Self-Verification in Clinical Depression: The Desire for Negative Evaluation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 105, No. 3, pp 358-368.