ABSTRACT
In the final two chapters of this book, we turn to phenomena whose practical implications are more direct than some of the phenomena previously discussed. In Chapter 10, Robin Murphy and colleagues discuss the “depressive realism” effect. This effect, first reported by Alloy and Ambramson (1979), concerns the difference between depressed and nondepressed individuals in their ability to rate zero contingencies. Zero contingencies (DP = 0) are where, for example, an individual’s action does not change the probability with which an event occurs. When subsequently asked to rate the level of contingency, depressed individuals are generally more accurate than nondepressed individuals. Depressed and nondepressed individuals’ ratings do not appear to differ when the contingency is nonzero. Taken at face value, these results seem to pose certain questions for the position that depression is related to faulty thought processes (e.g., Beck, 1976).
