Tendencies Toward Mania and Tendencies TowardDepression Have Distinct Motivational, Affective,and Cognitive Correlates

摘要

Debate has emerged in the literature onmania, with some evidence suggesting that tenden-cies toward mania relate to negative emotional andcognitive styles, and other evidence suggesting thattendencies toward mania relate to positive emotionaland cognitive styles. An initial study examined howtendencies toward mania (as measured by the Hypo-manic Personality Scale) and tendencies towarddepression (as measured by the Inventory to Diag-nose Depression-Lifetime version) were related todiverse measures pertaining to incentive and threatmotivations, negative and positive emotionality, andcognitive responses to emotion, among 238 under-graduates. Tendencies toward mania related to a self-reported pattern of reacting intensely to positivestimuli, both cognitively and emotionally, as well aslower sensitivity to threatening stimuli and lessrestraint over impulses. In contrast, tendencies towarddepression related to a pattern of reacting morestrongly to negative stimuli emotionally and cogni-tively, as well as deficits in the ability to savorpositive affect. This pattern was re-confirmed in a second sample of 394 undergraduates, who com-pleted many of the same measures plus a measure ofcurrent mood symptoms. This second sample con-firmed that the pattern was not mood-state dependent.Implications for future research and clinical work arediscussed, including an intriguing conceptual parallelin the distinct sets of correlates of depressive versusmanic tendencies.