The self-preoccupation of depressives.

The study of depression has recently focused on interpersonal aspects of the disorder. Specifically, it has been suggested that depressed persons may engage in behavior which has an aversive impact on others. The social psychology literature has found that self-preoccupation, largely manifested in inappropriately high self-disclosure, results in being viewed negatively by others. The present study was an attempt to link these two areas by assessing whether depressed persons are self-preoccupied, and if so, whether such self-preoccupation has a negative interpersonal impact. Three groups of female subjects, composed of depressed outpatients, nondepressed outpatients, and normal controls (N = 36), engaged in face-to-face dyads with randomly selected females. Behavioral and observer ratings of self-preoccupation were taken, as well as self-report measures of interpersonal impact. Depressives were found to be excessively self-preoccupied. However, this behavior did not have the expected aversive impact on others. Possible explanations for these findings were discussed. Directions for future research were presented