Those suffering from depression are more pessimistic about the future. A German research group has now investigated why little changes even after a good experience. As she reports in Clinical Psychological Science, those affected tend to see their successes as the exception to the rule. In individual cases, they could adapt their expectations to the specific situation. “But you have trouble generalizing this learning experience.”
The team led by Tobias Kube from the University of Koblenz-Landau presented around 380 subjects with supposedly very difficult tasks that came from a test of emotional intelligence. Before doing so, they were asked to estimate how well they would do. After the test, they randomly received one of three possible feedbacks: They would be among the top 50 percent, 10 percent or 1 percent of the participants. Then they should assess how they would probably master this or similar tasks in the future.
After all three types of feedback, the test subjects significantly improved their prognosis on average. However, those who showed signs of depression according to a questionnaire considered their good results to be an exception. The second most positive feedback seemed most credible to them; after that, their expectations of success increased the most.
In the second experiment, the test persons were asked to imagine that they were talking to old acquaintances of whom they did not have the best memories at a school friend’s party. But the conversation is going better than expected: either easy, moderate or extremely positive. The moderately positive story again seemed more believable and raised expectations for similar situations the most. The researchers suspect that there may be a “tipping point” at which exuberant praise does not appear authentic. However, the results are not entirely clear.