Depression Proneness and Reactions to a Depressive Stimulus

In the context of a project examining depression vulnerability and cigarette smoking, the authors tested whether depression-vulnerable people differed from less vul­nerable people in their reactions to a depressive stimulus. Regular smokers with a history of depression but not currently depressed (n = 63) and never-depressed smokers (n = 64) listened to audiotapes of confederates reading depressive and nondepressive scripts and reported their reactions. Neither a history of depression nor self-reported depression proneness predicted reactions to depression. However, depression proneness was posi­tively correlated with beliefs about depression contagion. Likewise, stronger depression-related contagion beliefs and lower levels of empathic responding predicted behavioral rejection of the depressive stimulus.