On the revision of negative expectations in people with depressive symptoms - A series of two experimental investigations

• Applicants: Dr. Tobias Kube; Professor Winfried Rief, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449791349

Several lines of research suggest that people with depressive symptoms have difficulty revising established negative views when novel positive experiences are made. Recently, “cognitive immunization” has been discussed as a new mechanism underlying this dysfunctional information processing in depression. This means that positive experiences that disconfirm negative expectations are devalued such that negative expectations are maintained. The influence of cognitive immunization on the persistence of negative expectations has been confirmed in preliminary work by the applicants. In view of the negative influence of persistent negative expectations on the course of depressive symptoms, it is of high clinical relevance to understand the mechanism of cognitive immunization in a more differentiated way, and to identify strategies that have the potential to modify this maladaptive information processing pattern. The aim of the present project proposal is therefore to investigate in a series of two experiments the influence of cognitive immunization on the revision of negative expectations in two different areas of life (performance expectations and expectations of future life events). Well-established experimental paradigms of depression research will be used for these experiments, some of which will be slightly modified for the research objective of this project proposal. In both experiments, cognitive immunization will be enhanced in one group and inhibited in another. To investigate the specificity of this assumed cognitive mechanism, both experiments will also include an experimental group with a distraction task. In addition, interpretations biases as well as selective memory will be considered in terms of further cognitive factors that may contribute to the maintenance of negative expectations despite new positive information. Moreover, both experiments will include a control group without experimental manipulation. In both studies, clinical samples with a total of at least 280 depression patients will be examined. The proposal is designed as a bi-centric project with the sites Landau and Marburg.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants