Depression and Social Information Gathering

An experiment was conducted to investigate depressed and nondepressed subjects' social information gathering under high -and low-utility conditions. Subjects were asked to help develop a videotape presumably concerned with interview processes. Subsequently, under conditions designed to manipulate the utility of the information, subjects selected questions to ask during the interview. As expected, depressed subjects sought more diagnostic information than nondepressed subjects. In addition, even when the information was considered to be of little usefulness, depressives asked significantly more high-diagnostic questions and fewer low-diagnostic questions. It is proposed that depressives have increased motivation to seek diagnostic information owing to feelings of a lack of control and uncertainty.