DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTS OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE ON DEPRESSED AND NONDEPRESSED PATIENTS

Abstract

Previous clinical observations have suggested that the tangible demonstration to a depressed patient that he can successfully attain a stated goal may ameliorate his pessimism, low self-esteem and loss of motivation. An experiment was devised to test the proposition that the depressed patient is so sensitive to positive or negative information about himself that a minor success or failure experience on a seemingly irrelevant task would affect his specific self-evaluation, expectancies and performance. In an experiment disguised as part of psychiatric outpatient procedures, 10 depressed patients were assigned to a “success” condition and 10 to a“failure” condition. A control group of 20 nondepressed patients was similarly divided. Feedback regarding apparent performance on a card-sorting task was controlled by the experimenter. As expected, the depressed patients were more pessimistic about the likelihood of their reaching their stated goal and (subsequently) rated the quality of their performance as significantly poorer than did the nondepressed group. Despite these negative expectancies and negative self-evaluations, the actual output of the depressed group was as good as that of the control group. Level of aspiration was the same for depressed and nondepressed groups. Following the initial task, the patients were given a second, more difficult task. The previously “successful” depressed patients showed more optimism, higher level of aspiration and better performance on the second task than did the depressed patients who had “failed.” It is noteworthy that previous success or failure had opposite effects on the performance of the two types of patients on the second task. In the depressed group, the actual output of the patients who had previously succeeded was higher than that of the group who had previously failed. In the nondepressed group, the reverse occurred: previous failure resulted in better performance than did previous success. Among the clinical implications of this study is that concrete, favorable feedback regarding specific performance not only improves the depressed patient's pessimism and level of aspiration but can also increase his productivity.