| The present study was designed to investigate the social behavior of depressed targets during a brief acquaintance paradigm and to identify specific instances of verbal behavior that might account for their aversive social impact. Twenty clinically depressed targets and twenty nondepressed targets engaged in a brief conversation with a same sex rater for six minutes. The present study made use of a novel experimental design that gave raters the ability to assess the moment-by-moment social impact of target behavior. Conversations were audiotaped and later analyzed for differences in type, valence, and content of verbal responses emitted. Targets were further classified in terms of their social effectiveness. Social effectiveness was defined as a target's ability to make a positive first impression on a rater. Results found few between group differences in the frequencies of type, valence, and content of verbal behavior emitted. One finding, however, was that socially ineffective targets emitted more content about the environment and depressed targets emitted less. This pattern of results likely represents differences in rates of personal disclosures, with socially ineffective targets disclosing less personal information. Subsequent sequential analyses revealed that depressed targets emitted significantly more negative solicited self-disclosures, and more neutral self-disclosures at times when self-disclosures was both solicited and unsolicited. Moreover, negative self-disclosures were found to have an aversive impact on raters. Implications of these findings for the treatment of depression are discussed, and directions for future research are outlined. |
