from the sadder-man-but-wiser-now-I-read-these-results-to-you dept.
New study undermines the theory that depressed people are just more realistic:
Are depressed people simply more realistic in judging how much they control their lives, while others view the world through rose-colored lenses, living under the illusion that they have more control than they do?
That's the general idea behind "depressive realism," a theory that has held sway in science and popular culture for more than four decades.
The problem is, it's just not true, new research finds.
[...] The concept of depressive realism stems from a 1979 study of college students examining whether they could predict how much control they had over whether a light turned green when they pushed a button. The original research concluded that the depressed students were better at identifying when they had no control over the lights, while those who weren't depressed tended to overestimate their level of control.
Moore and his colleagues set out to try to replicate those findings as part of a broader effort to restore trust in scientific research, much of which is woven into the fabric of the scientific community and wider culture. Researchers are revisiting bedrock studies to shore up the most basic of scientific principles: Can the research—and its conclusions—be replicated?
[...] The results, Moore says, undermined his belief in depressive realism.
[...] While depression may not improve judgment, the issue of how to accurately gauge our level of control in various situations has broader implications throughout life, Moore says.
"We live with a great deal of uncertainty about how much control we have—over our careers, our health, our body weight, our friendships, or our happiness," says Moore. "What actions can we take that really matter? If we want to make good choices in life, it's very helpful to know what we control and what we don't."
Journal Reference:
Amelia S. Dev, Don A. Moore, Sheri L. Johnson, et al. Sadder ≠ Wiser: Depressive Realism Is Not Robust to Replication [open], Collabra: Psychology, 2022. DOI: 10.1525/collabra.38529
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 29 2022, @05:36AM (2 children)
Maybe in the mean time, even non-depressive people learned how little they can influence, but just don't care.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday October 29 2022, @10:39PM (1 child)
Well, that roughly correlates to a real psychological effect called learned helplessness [psychologytoday.com].
(Score: 3, Touché) by Subsentient on Sunday October 30 2022, @02:57AM
Ahh, the name I'd pick for a depressive-suicidal black metal band! "Learned Helplessness"!
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Saturday October 29 2022, @07:22AM (2 children)
That's one study, there's been an endless amount of work done on this since then. So the original work may not stand up to scrutiny, but numerous followup studies would also need to be wrong for the overall effect to be wrong.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday October 29 2022, @01:57PM (1 child)
Well, are those numerous followup studies wrong or not? Don't leave us hanging.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2022, @03:52AM
> Don't leave us hanging.
Yeah, we're dying here.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday October 29 2022, @09:00AM (4 children)
We are depressed because we are realistic.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Subsentient on Sunday October 30 2022, @03:04AM (3 children)
This guy gets it. Depression doesn't increase realism, duh. It's a *result* of realism.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2022, @03:57AM (2 children)
There's 2 basic personality types - yin and yang, if you like. One almost believes its own bullshit - extroverts, optimists. The other is almost completely cynical - whatever you call that. Both are rigid personality types. The truth is there is no absolute personality. There is no end-point in the personality spectrum that offers sanctity. You are where you are, literally. Start there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2022, @07:32AM
I'm about 50-50. Now what.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday October 30 2022, @10:18AM
> Both are rigid personality types
I absolutely believe that there is no such thing as a rigid personality type, and you can tailor your own personality to whatever need. But then, I'm an optimist.
(that was a joke)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Saturday October 29 2022, @10:31AM (4 children)
The story/publication seems to be beating a straw man. I am not aware of any definition of depression as to the effect implied. The clinical definition is a state of depressed mood/absence of positive attitude, functional limitations, and/or reduced functioning in everyday life for more than three month. This certainly does not have to do anything with a realistic worldview.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Saturday October 29 2022, @11:08AM
I'm sure if dig hard enough you'll find one of the many definitions of "realistic worldview" overlaps with clinical depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Saturday October 29 2022, @04:35PM (1 child)
It that is the definition, I've been depressed since my early 20s.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Saturday October 29 2022, @11:15PM
Welp, you can always take a screening questionnaire [mhanational.org] and recall how long you've been feeling specific symptoms correlating to clinical depressive affective disorder (I hate using the D-word proper because it's so misinterpretable by the general population). Or if you search around for "IDS-SR30", you can find PDFs in case you're worried about your scores being transmitted via Jewish space lasers to the deep state [youtu.be] (warning, minor bad language).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 29 2022, @07:09PM
I count three or four other posts at this time that support that straw man.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Saturday October 29 2022, @02:24PM
My first reaction when I read this was similar to Opportunist's, that realism tends to lead to depression rather than the other way around. However I also think it's highly dependent on the individual's environment. I think most humans are quite bad at predicting future outcomes whether pleasant or unpleasant and they get particularly bad when conditions approach extremes--think trying to predict the Industrial Revolution, the exponential growth of a virus, climate breakdown, plastic pollution or even increases in government corruption and authoritarianism.
If you grew up in the western post-war boom and with wealthy parents, an optimistic outlook would be quite likely to be closer to realism than a pessimistic one and at the same time this good quality of life should tend to lead, on average, to a happier and healthier mental state. On the other hand if you're struggling in an economic crisis, unsure where the next meal is going to come from, a deeply pessimistic outlook is probably more accurate, and thus closer to a realistic one, than optimism. To relate this to my own experiences in these crazy times, I certainly wouldn't call myself an optimistic person and yet no matter how badly I think people are going to behave, they keep surprising me on a daily basis by being even worse.
In summary, I think what counts as realism and how it relates to depression is highly dependent on circumstances: individual, local and global.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2022, @03:54PM
This is 100% nonsense.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been the go-to treatment for depression since a forever ago, and it is explicit that what's going on in the vast majority of cases is that the patient is not viewing the world realisticly, making unwarranted assumptions, and engaged in illogical thinking processes.
As others noted, humans are on average kinda shit at predicting the future. The treatment is surprisingly scientific: for concerning events/activities, explicitly record your assumptions and predicted outcome, and record the actual outcome.
CBT uses (among other things) about a dozen categories of errors in thinking which are clearly exposed by such record keeping, and how to interrupt them the next time they come up. In other words, the patient starts to vew the world more realisticly more often.