Individual differences in depression are reflected in negative self-evaluations when imagining future events

Abstract

Emotional disorders, including depression, are associated with deficits in retrieving past and imagining future autobiographical events. Imagining future events requires accessing different types of information, from general conceptual knowledge to specific event details. Here, we tested the hypothesis that depression levels within a community sample are most strongly reflected in how conceptual information about the self (i.e., self-schemas) are accessed. In an online experiment, we collected ratings of depression as well as anxiety, which often presents alongside depression, in a group of participants who then completed a trait judgment task in which they judged whether positive and negative traits reflected the self or another person, followed by an event imagination task in which participants generated specific future events for the self or another person. A second experiment was run on a separate group of participants who performed these same tasks in reversed order. Across experiments, we found that depression but not anxiety levels were associated with greater endorsement of negative traits only for the self, was not related to the ability to imagine specific future events but did alter how these events were evaluated. An exploratory analysis revealed greater endorsement of negative traits for the self when the trait judgement task came before imagining events. These results provide new insights into how depression levels in a subclinical sample are associated with changes in autobiographical knowledge, enhancing negative self-schemas, when imagining future events.