Research suggests that individuals who are more depressed are prone to behaviors that reinforce their depressive symptoms. We performed a novel test of the self-verification perspective of this phenomenon. In two experiments, nonclinical participants completed a sham color-gazing task in which depressed people ostensibly see colors become less intense (less-intense condition) or more intense (more-intense condition) while gazing at them. Depression related to perceiving colors as turning less intense in the less-intense condition and more intense in the more-intense condition. These effects of depression (a) persisted after controlling for proneness for nondepressive negative affect or gender, (b) likely occurred without awareness, and (c) were not attributable to accuracy goals or opportunistic self-presentation goals. Depression also related to self-reported increased likelihood of possessing depression characteristics and rating them as more tolerable, and mediation evidence suggested that responses on the color-gazing task partly drove these reports.

研究表明，情绪低落的人容易表现出加剧其抑郁症状的行为。我们对这种现象的自我验证观点进行了新颖的测试。在两个实验中，非临床参与者完成了虚假的注视任务，其中沮丧的人表面上注视着他们时，颜色看起来变得较弱（较弱的状态）或较浓（较强的状态）。抑郁与感知颜色有关，即在强度较低的条件下变弱，而强度较高的状态下变强。抑郁症的这些影响（a）在控制了非抑郁性负面影响或性别的倾向后仍然存在，（b）可能在没有意识的情况下发生，并且（c）不能归因于准确性目标或机会性自我陈述目标。