Relationships between dimensions of depressive experience and perceptions of the lives of people in general.

This study examines relationships between depression and perceptions of the lives of people in general. One hundred fourteen college students completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977), the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (Blatt, D'Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976), and two instruments that asked subjects to make judgments about the frequency of various positive and negative outcomes in other people's lives. Highly Dependent and highly Self-Critical women perceived people's lives as characterized by much misfortune, failure, and unhappiness. Unexpectedly, Efficacy scores, which are negatively related to depression, were also associated with negative perceptions of people's lives in women. Among the men, overall depression was not related to perceptions of how frequently people succeed at specific, concrete life tasks, but depressed subjects perceived others as experiencing a low level of subjective well-being. Implications for the notion of a depressive negative bias toward the self are discussed.