Mood regulation expectancies and emotion avoidance in depression vulnerability

Timo Brockmeyer; Martin Grosse Holtforth; Nils Pfeiffer; Matthias Backenstrass; Hans Christoph Friederich; Hinrich Bents

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.018

Mood regulation expectancies and emotion avoidance in depression vulnerability

Timo Brockmeyer^*, Martin Grosse Holtforth, Nils Pfeiffer, Matthias Backenstrass, Hans Christoph Friederich, Hinrich Bents

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychological Medicine

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Impaired mood regulation has been considered to be a vulnerability factor for depression. However, there is a lack of studies specifically testing whether (a) negative mood regulation (NMR) expectancies and (b) emotion avoidance (EA) are associated with the risk for clinical depression. Therefore, the present study investigated these two specific facets of emotion processing in 20 formerly-depressed individuals (FD) and 20 never-depressed individuals (ND). As expected, FD reported lower NMR expectancies and stronger EA as compared to ND, suggesting that these two variables are associated with depression vulnerability. Furthermore, NMR expectancies were negatively associated with EA, indicating that individuals with lower confidence in their negative mood regulation abilities are concurrently characterized by a stronger avoidance of emotional experience. These findings strengthen hypotheses of specific emotion processing deficits in depression vulnerability.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	351-354
Number of pages	4
Journal	Personality and Individual Differences
Volume	53
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.018
Publication status	Published - Aug 2012

Keywords

Avoidance
Depression
Emotion
Mood
Regulation
Vulnerability

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title = "Mood regulation expectancies and emotion avoidance in depression vulnerability",

abstract = "Impaired mood regulation has been considered to be a vulnerability factor for depression. However, there is a lack of studies specifically testing whether (a) negative mood regulation (NMR) expectancies and (b) emotion avoidance (EA) are associated with the risk for clinical depression. Therefore, the present study investigated these two specific facets of emotion processing in 20 formerly-depressed individuals (FD) and 20 never-depressed individuals (ND). As expected, FD reported lower NMR expectancies and stronger EA as compared to ND, suggesting that these two variables are associated with depression vulnerability. Furthermore, NMR expectancies were negatively associated with EA, indicating that individuals with lower confidence in their negative mood regulation abilities are concurrently characterized by a stronger avoidance of emotional experience. These findings strengthen hypotheses of specific emotion processing deficits in depression vulnerability.",

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T1 - Mood regulation expectancies and emotion avoidance in depression vulnerability

AU - Brockmeyer, Timo

AU - Holtforth, Martin Grosse

AU - Pfeiffer, Nils

AU - Backenstrass, Matthias

AU - Friederich, Hans Christoph

AU - Bents, Hinrich

PY - 2012/8

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N2 - Impaired mood regulation has been considered to be a vulnerability factor for depression. However, there is a lack of studies specifically testing whether (a) negative mood regulation (NMR) expectancies and (b) emotion avoidance (EA) are associated with the risk for clinical depression. Therefore, the present study investigated these two specific facets of emotion processing in 20 formerly-depressed individuals (FD) and 20 never-depressed individuals (ND). As expected, FD reported lower NMR expectancies and stronger EA as compared to ND, suggesting that these two variables are associated with depression vulnerability. Furthermore, NMR expectancies were negatively associated with EA, indicating that individuals with lower confidence in their negative mood regulation abilities are concurrently characterized by a stronger avoidance of emotional experience. These findings strengthen hypotheses of specific emotion processing deficits in depression vulnerability.

AB - Impaired mood regulation has been considered to be a vulnerability factor for depression. However, there is a lack of studies specifically testing whether (a) negative mood regulation (NMR) expectancies and (b) emotion avoidance (EA) are associated with the risk for clinical depression. Therefore, the present study investigated these two specific facets of emotion processing in 20 formerly-depressed individuals (FD) and 20 never-depressed individuals (ND). As expected, FD reported lower NMR expectancies and stronger EA as compared to ND, suggesting that these two variables are associated with depression vulnerability. Furthermore, NMR expectancies were negatively associated with EA, indicating that individuals with lower confidence in their negative mood regulation abilities are concurrently characterized by a stronger avoidance of emotional experience. These findings strengthen hypotheses of specific emotion processing deficits in depression vulnerability.

KW - Avoidance

KW - Depression

KW - Emotion

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KW - Regulation

KW - Vulnerability

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Mood regulation expectancies and emotion avoidance in depression vulnerability

Abstract

Keywords

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