An ERP Study On The Characteristics Of Counterfactual Thinking And Social Comparison Of Depressed Individuals

At present,there is only a small number of behavior studies on the counterfactual thinking and social comparison characteristics aimed at depressive individuals,and because this kind of study did not delve into the cerebral nerve mechanism of depressive individuals in the process of outcome evaluation,they only infer the relationship between the degree of depression and counterfactual thinking and social comparison from the aspect of type and quantity of inducement of counterfactual thinking and social comparison,resulting in a on-going disputed conclusion.On the basis of the existing researches,this paper attempts to explore the characteristics of counterfactual thinking and social comparison of depressive individuals from the angle of neuro-electrophysiology.In this study,two experiments were designed,using event-related potentials(ERPs)techniques to record the characteristics of brain processing in the subjects from the healthy control group,depressive State group and depression group when doing simple gambling tasks.In the experiment 1,a 3(group being tested: healthy control group,depressive state group and depression group)× 2(condition: upward counterfactual thinking,downward counterfactual thinking)two-factor mixed design was used to investigate the difference in counterfactual thinking in the process of outcome feedback evaluation between different individuals with different degree of depression;experiment 2 : 2(Group being tested: health control group and Depressive State group)× 3(Condition: upward social comparison,parallel social comparison,and downward social comparison)two-factor mixed design was used to investigate the characteristics of social comparison of individuals with different depressive degree in the gains-loss situation.To summarize,results as follows:(1)The degree of counterfactual thinking of the depression group was weaker than that of healthy control group and depressive state group,and the counterfactual thinking of depressive patients has been weakened.(2)The upward counterfactual thinking has a greater amplitude of P300 wave than the downward counterfactual thinking does,which shows that the intensity of regret emotion is stronger than that of the grateful emotion.(3)In the Healthy control group,the subjects showed a higher tendency of social comparison,their emotional experience is also stronger;and as to the subjects in healthy control group and depressive State group,and their emotional experience produced by downward social comparison was equally stronger than their emotional experience produced by upward social comparison.