Dysphoria and Specificity in Self-Focused Attention

The hypothesis was that dysphoric individuals' greater self focused attention reflects attempts at self-understanding as opposed to awareness of their thoughts and feelings. Subjects in Study I completed the short form of the Beck Depression Inventory and the Self Consciousness Scale. As expected, more-dysphoric subjects reported higher self-reflectiveness but not higher internal state awareness. This finding was replicated in Study 2, in which subjects also completed the Attributional Complexity Scale; other results suggest that dysphoric individuals' attainment of higher scores on the Attributional Complexity Scale, which includes self-referent items, is intrinsically related to their tendency for self reflection. Dysphoric individuals may engage in self-reflection because of poor understanding of self; various indexes of maladjustment seem associated with a poor understanding of self Other possible causal links are discussed