Social Inadequacy and Depression: Overt Behavior and Self-Evaluation Processes

The social behavior and self-evaluation of depressed outpatients, nondepressed/nonanxious subjects, depressed/anxious subjects, and nondepressed/anxious subjects was evaluated in the context of a social interaction task with male and female confederates. Subjects also completed a questionnaire on the adequacy of their social support systems. Depressed individuals reported relatively inadequate social relationships; however, results from the social interaction task indicated that negative expectancies and relatively strict self-evaluation of social behavior were more characteristic of the depressed than were social skill deficits. In addition, the study provided some evidence that social difficulties are more relevant to depression than anxiety, although this was true only for expectancy ratings. This study also found no significant differences on any dependent measure between the depressed outpatients and the analogue depressed/anxious subjects—a finding that provides further data for the controversy of whether clinical and analogue-clinical groups represent continuous or discontinuous samples.