Background and objectives

Depressed people tend to hold stable negative beliefs that resist challenges. Two experiments investigated the cognitive bases of belief change or resistance to change following the provision of supportive or challenging pseudo-evidence.

Method

Students scoring high and low on a measure of depressed state read belief statements, each followed by invented experimental evidence to either verify or discount them. Two days later, they read all the belief statements again, together with new statements, this time rating belief.

Results

The students agreed that the statements described common beliefs and that the evidence was plausible. Discounted statements were believed less than new statements on the test. Also, dysphoric students believed discounted and new statements less than verified statements, but that difference was larger for the nondysphoric students. Parameter estimates of the habitual basis for belief ratings, obtained with process-dissociation procedures, were higher in the dysphoric group, and estimates of evidence recollection were lower. The latter finding was conceptually supported by deficient recognition of the gist of the discounting evidence in the dysphoric group (Experiment 2).

Limitations

Experiment 2 results replicated the rating effects in Experiment 1, but not the parameter differences, due to low power as a consequence of the university response to the pandemic.

Conclusions

We interpret these results in the context of other evidence regarding belief change and depressive cognition, such as habitual rumination and deficient cognitive control.

中文翻译：

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挑战抑郁信念：稳定或变化的习惯性和回忆性成分

背景和目标

抑郁的人倾向于持有稳定的消极信念来抵抗挑战。两项实验调查了在提供支持性或具有挑战性的伪证据后信念改变或抵制改变的认知基础。

方法

在抑郁状态的测量中得分高低的学生阅读信念陈述，每个陈述之后都是发明的实验证据来验证或打折扣。两天后，他们再次阅读了所有的信念陈述，以及新的陈述，这次是对信念进行评级。

结果

学生们同意这些陈述描述了共同的信念，并且证据是合理的。打折的陈述被认为少于测试中的新陈述。此外，焦虑的学生认为打折的和新的陈述少于经过验证的陈述，但对于非焦虑的学生来说，这种差异更大。通过过程分离程序获得的信念评级习惯性基础的参数估计值在烦躁组中较高，而对证据回忆的估计值较低。后一种发现在概念上得到了对烦躁组中折扣证据要点认识不足的支持（实验 2）。

限制

实验 2 的结果复制了实验 1 中的评级效果，但没有复制参数差异，这是由于大学对大流行的反应导致的低功率。

结论

我们在有关信念改变和抑郁认知的其他证据的背景下解释这些结果，例如习惯性反刍和认知控制不足。