Depression is not related to deficits in emotional reasoning skills

Kube, Tobias; Friehs, Thilo; Glombiewski, Julia Anna and Gollwitzer, Mario (October 2022): Depression is not related to deficits in emotional reasoning skills. In: Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 196, 111728

Abstract

Several lines of research have examined whether people with depressive symptoms have deficits in social-cognitive abilities, such as emotional reasoning skills. While many depressed people report having such deficits, it is less clear whether depressive symptoms are related to actual objective performance deficits. We examined the relationship between emotional reasoning skills (as assessed with the TEMINT) and depressive symptoms (i.e., BDI-II) in a mini meta-analysis of 11 studies with data from 1503 participants with varying levels of depression, from healthy people to clinical samples with severely depressed people. Using a random effects approach, we found a small but significant correlation between depressive symptoms and TEMINT performance (mean rz = 0.065), indicating that depressive symptoms were associated with higher emotional reasoning skills. These findings suggest that depression is unrelated to deficits in emotional reasoning, though assessed with only one test. If anything, depressive symptoms are associated with improved performance in the TEMINT. The current results point to a discrepancy between depressed people's self-evaluation of their abilities (as shown in previous research) and their actual performance. Our findings also have practical implications as they suggest that clinicians may focus on modifying depressed people's negative views of themselves, rather than on improving their skills.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Psychology and Education Science > Department Psychology > Social Psychology
• Subjects: 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 150 Psychology
• ISSN: 01918869
• Language: English