It's all about me: Self-focused attention and depressed mood

摘要

The present study examined self-focused attention in dysphoria under various mood conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to either a positive, negative, or neutral writing condition. Results indicated that dysphoric participants displayed significantly greater self-focused attention across all conditions relative to the non-dysphoric participants. Taken together, these findings indicate that heightened self-focused attention is a pervasive pattern in dysphoric persons that may contribute to maintenance of a dysphoric mood state.