Year of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Name

Clinical Psychology

Department or School/College

Department of Psychology

Committee Chair

Stuart Hall

Commitee Members

Allen Szalda-Petree, Greg Machek, Chris Fiore, Erin Semmens

Keywords

Depression, Emotional Suppression, Episodic Specificity, Future Thinking, Prospection

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to elucidate the relationship between two transdiagnostic mechanisms of psychopathology: prospection (i.e., one’s ability to imagine the future), and emotional suppression, a maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategy. Specifically, we proposed that when individuals engage in emotional suppression, it interferes with prospection, which might then contribute to the development of depressive symptoms.

To assess the relationship between emotional suppression and prospection in individuals with depression we used an online experimental paradigm with an MTurk sample of 128 participants (64 depressed; 64 non-depressed) randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the depressed suppression induction condition (D-SIC) (N=32); the non-depressed suppression induction condition (ND-SIC) (N=32); the depressed view control condition (D-VCC) (N=32); the non-depressed view control condition (ND-VCC) (N=32).

Results did not support our hypothesis that suppression would lead to worse prospection in individuals with depression. However, our findings did replicate and further support the extant literature that individuals with depressive symptoms generate less episodically specific prospections; therefore, episodic specificity is a fruitful target for both treatment and research examining underlying mechanisms that contribute to symptoms of depression and other forms of psychopathology.

Download

Share

COinS
 

© Copyright 2023 Chelsey M. Maxson