PhD Studentship: Modulating self-referential social processing in depression

Aims

This project aims to investigate cognitive approaches to modifying social evaluative learning deficits in depression. Depression is associated with stable deficits in the integration of positive but not negative social feedback during social evaluative learning tasks. Enhancing positive social evaluation learning has been identified as a modifiable target for therapeutic interventions for reducing depression-linked social withdrawal, reward motivation, and negative self-concept. This proposed project will test the effects of prosocial mental simulation on augmenting social evaluative learning in depression.

Background

Being able to learn from social feedback is critical to building interpersonal relationships and one’s self-concept. While healthy individuals show a positive bias in social evaluative learning, preferentially processing positive relative to negative evaluations about the self, depressed individuals show the reverse bias. Reduced positive self-biases in social interactions are likely to maintain negative perceptions of the self, reinforcing social withdrawal and increasing the likelihood of poor social relationships, subsequently maintaining depression symptoms (Lewinsohn, Mischel, Chaplin, & Barton, 1980). Recently, deficient processing self-referential positive information has been identified as the most robust predictor of low approach motivation and reward responsivity (Hsu et al., 2020). 

Objectives

1. To assess current knowledge on the emotional benefits of prosocial interaction in depression, and the role of mental imagery in these processes
2. To test the impact of prosocial mental simulation on social evaluative learning
3. To test whether prosocial mental simulation effects can be augmented by cognitive bias training of interpretation of ambiguity and causal attribution style

Planned Work Packages

Work Package 1: Systematic Review

A comprehensive review of the literature will be conducted to assess the emotional and self-concept impact of prosocial interaction, and its links to depression and prosocial mental simulation.

Work Package 2: Laboratory Experiments

Three experiments will be conducted to assess the impact of prosocial mental simulation on social evaluative learning, self-concept, and social expectancies in dysphoric individuals against control conditions (verbal positive self-affirmation; prosocial autobiographical memory recall; social mental simulation).

Work Package 3: Laboratory Experiments 

Two experiments will be conducted to assess the impact of positive interpretation bias training (Study 1) and positive causal attribution style (Study 2) on augmenting prosocial mental simulation’s impact on social evaluative learning in dysphoric individuals.

Anticipated Impact

Findings will serve to inform the identification of novel modifiable cognitive targets for promoting social reward-seeking and positive self-concept in depression. The project has the potential to inform the development of cost-effective and accessible early intervention strategies. The project will also contribute to the training of a highly skilled researcher with expertise in experimental psychopathology, mental health science, and social psychological interventions.

Please contact Kate Button for more information (Kb658@bath.ac.uk).

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