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Self-Criticism, Failure, and Depressive Affect: A Test of Personality–Event Congruence and Symptom Specificity

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Abstract

Diathesis-stress models of cognitive vulnerability to depression posit that personality factors (e.g., self-criticism) interact with congruent negative life events to produce distinct depressive symptom clusters. The present study employed a stress-induction procedure to assess whether self-criticism would interact with achievement-related failure to increase introjective depressive affect in a nonclinical sample. Hypotheses were generally supported with respect to introjective depressive affect reported immediately following the stress-induction procedure. However, self-criticism did not interact with achievement failure in predicting depressive affect reported 24 hours later.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, California

    Tamar Mendelson

  2. Department of Psychiatry, New York University Medical Center, New York, New York

    Rand J. Gruen

  3. Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Landmark Center, Harvard School of Public Health, 401 Park Drive, P.O. Box 15679, Boston, Massachusetts, 02215

    Tamar Mendelson

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  1. Tamar Mendelson
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  2. Rand J. Gruen
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Correspondence to Tamar Mendelson.

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Mendelson, T., Gruen, R.J. Self-Criticism, Failure, and Depressive Affect: A Test of Personality–Event Congruence and Symptom Specificity. Cogn Ther Res 29, 301–314 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-005-1098-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-005-1098-2

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