ASIDE: Adolescents' Social Interpretations Determine their Experiences

摘要: Authors Michael V. Bronstein, Reuma Gadassi Polack, Jonas Everaert, Jutta Joormann, & Sophia Vinogradov Description Everyday life is replete with ambiguous social situations; ambiguity in these situations can be resolved via interpretation (Blanchette & Richards, 2010). Cognitive models of depression and social anxiety have traditionally held that these forms of psychopathology may be caused, at least in part, by a tendency to infer more negative and fewer positive interpretations of ambiguous situations (Clark et al., 1999; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). More recent models have extended this account by asserting that the impact of interpretation bias may depend upon the resulting fit between interpretations and evolving situations (Mehu & Scherer, 2015). Accordingly, the consequences of interpretation for psychological wellbeing may depend not only on whether and to what extent interpretations tend to be resolved in a particular direction (“interpretation bias”), but also on the degree to which interpretations are revised as situations change (“interpretation flexibility”). In support of this possibility, previous work by our group has found that, in adults, less flexible interpretations of ambiguous social situations, above and beyond interpretation bias, are consistently associated with depression and social anxiety (Everaert et al., 2018, 2020). Moreover, we have found that the relation between inflexible interpretations and depression/social anxiety is mediated by dampening of positive emotions (the tendency to reduce the intensity/duration of positive emotions, for example by thinking “I should not be happy; good things won’t last for me”)(Everaert et al …