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BRIEF REPORTS

Dampening of positive affect prospectively predicts depressive symptoms in non-clinical samples

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Pages 75-82 | Received 13 Aug 2010, Accepted 24 Dec 2010, Published online: 15 Jul 2011
 

Abstract

Past research has convincingly shown that a ruminative response style to negative affect (NA) predicts concurrent and prospective levels of depressive symptoms. Recent findings suggest that how people respond to positive affect (PA) might also be involved in the development of depressive symptoms, although this has heretofore not been tested prospectively. Participants from two non-clinical samples (total N=487) completed measures of depressive symptoms, response styles to NA (negative rumination) and response styles to PA (positive rumination and mood dampening) at two assessments separated by a 3-month (Sample 1) and 5-month period (Sample 2). Results in both samples showed that increased dampening responses to PA predict depressive symptoms at follow-up, even when taking into account baseline depressive symptoms and ruminative responses to NA. The results suggest that (dampening) responses to PA add useful information above and beyond (ruminative) responses to NA in predicting depression symptoms prospectively.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported in part by a research programme of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) (G.0339.08).

  We thank Ine Ghesquière for her assistance in data collection for Study 1.

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