The effect of depression on affective information process

• Main Authors: Yi-Chun Yeh, 葉怡君
• Other Authors: Bi-Ling Shieh
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/26770985504851426257

碩士 === 高雄醫學院 === 行為科學研究所 === 87 === Mood has powerful effects on human behaviors--it is used by people as direct affective information in formulating evaluative judgement, effecting mood effects. Besides, person characteristics, such as gender and depressive state, are important determinants of information utilization strategies. This study investigated (1) how people make use of affect information (2) how males and females differ in affective information utilization strategies (3) how depressive state changes affective information utilization. A 2*2*2*2 (gender * levels of depression * mood induction * instructional set) between-subject factorial design was employed. First, 297 subjects (include 152 males and 145 females) were divided into two groups according to their depression score, and later Ss were randomly assigned to one of the four experiment conditions: positive or negative mood was induced in Ss; they were also informed that their induced mood was either meaningful and important, or unimportant and inconsequential. Then, Ss filled out scales on globe moods, globe self-esteem, general self-efficacy, and specific self-evaluation scales. The results showed that people utilized their emotional reactions as direct affective information via a controlled inference strategy. Males and females incorporated affective information in self-evaluations under different instructions regarding feelings. Non-depressed females utilized current affective information, when alerted to pay attention to feelings, whereas, non-depressed males utilized current affective information, when their attention was cued away from feelings. With respective to depressed group, males with higher level of depression were able to make use of various kinds of affective information. They might not spontaneously make extra efforts to minimize the effects of emotions on themselves, but with prompting, they were able to utilize affective information in or exclude affective information from self-evaluations. However, depressed females appeared unable to exclude original negative information of a depressive state as well as unable to utilize positive affective information in self-evaluations.