Self-Derogations and the Interpersonal Theory

The interpersonal theory of personality has been applied to explain depressed people's dilemma: The depressed person's submissive behavior invites dominating reactions from other people, and those reactions sustain the depressed person's depression. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that self-derogations connote submissiveness but are generally judged to be neutral in affiliation. Experiment 3 tested implications for the behavior of dysphoric and nondysphoric Ss as they interacted with a self-derogating, other-derogating, or nonderogating confederate partner. Ss selected a topic from a list and talked about it for 1 min; the confederate's script was fixed. The S's judgments of the confederate, choice of topics, satisfaction with the interaction, and actual responses were analyzed. Self-derogators were judged to be submissive, elicited dominating reactions, and selected more topics with negative content.