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Projects
Which role does cognitive immunization and expectation violation play in the maintenance and modification of depression-like social rejection expectations? – An associative learning paradigm on social rejection.
Project information
Social rejection expectations play an important role in the development and maintenance of depression. Clinical observations show that people with depression tend to maintain social rejection expectations despite disconfirming evidence (persistence) by devaluing positive social experiences (cognitive immunization). Our study has two objectives: First, we want to develop an associative learning paradigm in order to model and investigate the development, maintenance, and modification of depression-like social rejection expectations in non-clinical samples. Second, the study should shed light on the mechanism of cognitive immunization and the effectiveness of expectation-focused psychotherapeutic interventions (EFPI). Participants are going through an associative learning paradigm in which they experience repeated social rejection in a first phase within a specific social situation. As a result, participants should successively develop situation-specific social rejection expectations (acquisition phase). Subsequently, participants experience either social appreciation (expectation violation; modification phase) or further social rejection (expectation confirmation; stabilization phase) in a second phase leading to a change or stabilization of their situation-specific social rejection expectations. Between acquisition and modification phase some of the participants receive an intervention either preventing or promoting cognitive immunization. In a third phase (test phase) participants do not longer receive social feedback. The primary dependent variable in all three phases should be the extent of situation-specific social rejection expectation.
Current project status
survey phase till April 2020Do patients with depression differ in the acquisition and modification of social rejection expectations compared to healthy controls? – A time-to-event analysis.
Project information
Social rejection expectations contribute to the development and maintenance of depression. Expectation-focused models of depression ascribe the persistence of dysfunctional expectations in patients with depression to maladaptive informational processing (immunization) which prevents the correction of dysfunctional expectations in the face of disconfirming experiences. Our study has two objectives: First, to investigate whether patients with depression react more sensitively to experiences of social rejection by developing situation-specific social rejection expectations faster than healthy controls. Second, to investigate to what extent depressive patients differ from healthy controls in the immunization of positive social experiences and in the maintenance of situation-specific social expectations of rejection. Participants from both samples undergo an already tested learning paradigm in which they repeatedly experience situation-specific social rejection in a first phase. As a result, participants should successively develop situation-specific social rejection expectations (acquisition phase). In a second phase, participants should repeatedly experience situation-specific social appreciation in order to successively correct their situation-specific expectation of rejection. The primary dependent variable in both phases should be the extent of situation-specific social rejection expectations.
Current project status
survey phase till March 2021