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A COMPARISON OF SELF-DEVALUATION AND SOMATIC SUGGESTION CONTENT IN DEPRESSIVE MOOD MANIPULATION

A R N O L D SMALL'

George Muson L niversrii and Famil, C'ounyeling Cenrer

THEODORE GESSNER A N D KATHRYN WILLIAMS

George Mpron L'niversii)

The Velten Mood Induction Procedure (VMIP), often used to manipulate depressive mood, has its effectiveness attributed to the self-devaluative con- tent of its statements; this finding supports cognitive theories of depression. Recent research has suggested that somatic content is more important than self-devaluation content in producing depressive mood variations. To study this using the VMIP, a neutral condition and two modified depression con- ditions were used: Somatic and self-devaluation (N = 302). The results in- dicate that self-devaluative statements resulted in significantly more depressed affect than neutral Ss, but no more than somatic statements; this latter group, however, did not differ from neutral Ss. The results of the previous research indicating the importance of the somatic suggestion manipulations as having more influence than negative self-evaluative statements is questioned.

The Velten mood induction procedure (VMIP) (Velten, 1968) has become a popular method for producing mood changes of elation and depression. Of particular interest has been the effectiveness of this method for the manipulation of depressed mood. The

'Reprint requests fo Arnold Small. Family Counseling Center, I 1706 Bowman Green Dribe. Keaion. Virginia 22090

710 Journal of Clinical Psychology, September, 1983, Vol. 39, No. 5

depression mood induction procedure asks the Ss to read statements that are negatively self-evaluative or descriptive of somatic states associated with depression. A number of studies have shown this procedure to be effective in inducing depressive mood (cf. Frost, Graf, & Becker, 1979). The usual mechanism proposed to explain the effectiveness of the VMI P depression manipulation has been that negative self-devaluation components are the major determinants of the mood manipulation. Support for the cognitive view of depression (Blaney, 1977) has been advanced as a result.

The findings of Frost, Graf, and Becker (1979) have questioned the assumption that the major effects are dependent on the negative self-evaluation statements. These authors found that the somatic depressive items are of greater importance. In the aforementioned study, the items of the VMIP depression procedure were divided into two groups: Statements concerned with negative self-evaluation and statements concerned with somatic states. Using a sample of 60 females, it was found that the somatic suggestion statements were more effective than negative self-evaluation statements in producing depressive moods, which has major implications for cognitive-based theories of depres- sion. A major problem with this study is its relatively small sample size; 60 Ss were divided randomly into five groups of 12 each.

A recent study (Riskind, Rholes, & Eggers, 1982) did not find support for Frost et al. These authors found that both somatic and self-devaluative content, singly and/or in combination, produced powerful impacts on mood and, thus, lend their support to cognitive-based depression theories. Like the previous studies, the sample size is small (13 per cell). Also, this study used an unidentified 7-item mood scale. This precludes comparison with Frost et al., even though the latter group did not publish mean scores. In the literature, then, are two studies that examined the content of the VMIP statements and their effects and that yielded conflicting findings and conclusions.

This study is a replication of three of the five conditions used by Frost et al. (1979): Namely, the neutral, the self-devaluative, and the somatic suggestion conditions. However, the sample size is larger and included both males and females. Another varia- tion added in this study was that Ss both read and listened to the mood induction items.

METHOD Subjects and Procedure

Ss were 126 male and 176 female undergraduates. Ss initially completed a battery of tests that included the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL) (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965); this was selected because it was one of the Frost et al. measures. Afterward, they were given the opportunity to volunteer for an experimental session that was to be held shortly after the initial testing. Ss were assigned randomly to either a neutral, somatic-suggestion, or self-devaluation condition. They were instructed to simultaneously read and listen to a series of 50 statements; statements were typed on 3 X 5 cards, and Ss were asked to read the statements to themselves while they were listening to the item being read on a tape recording. Items were presented at the rate of 1 item per 15 seconds. Upon completion of the list, the Ss completed the MAACL. The statements in the neutral condition were identical to the statements used by Velten (1968). The two groups of depression statements were those used by Frost et al. (1979).

RESULTS A N D DISCUSSION To rule out the effects of possible initial differences in depressive affect, a 2 X 3

analysis of variance was performed using the pre-experimental score on the MAACL-D scores. The two independent variables were sex and the three experimental manipulations. There were no significant main effects or interactions, which indicates no difference in pre-experimental mood.

Sex Role and Mood 71 1

A 2 X 3 analysis of variance of the MAACL-D scores from the experimental session showed a significant main effect for the experimental manipulation F(2.296) = 7.74, p <.Ol). The means and SDs for the neutral, somatic suggestion, and self-devaluation con- ditions were 12.77 (SD = 5.8), 13.80 (SD = 7.0) and 14.94 (SD = 7.6), respectively. Duncan’s multiple-range tests were conducted to compare means. Ss in the self- devaluation condition reported significantly more depressive mood than Ss in the neutral condition (p <.05), but there were no significant differences from the Ss in the somatic suggestion condition; the latter group did not differ from the neutral Ss.

These data clearly support the expectation that depressed moods are induced by ex- posure to self-devaluation statements. Ss in the self-devaluative condition reported more depressed moods than Ss in the neutral condition. Occupying a mid-position was the somatic suggestion group. These results suggest that in the VMIP procedures negative self-references have a greater impact on mood than do suggestions of bodily sensations associated with depression, although they have some effect. These results are contradic- tory to the findings of Frost et al. (1979), who found the somatic content more influential in producing depressive mood. They are partially supportive of Riskind et al. (1982) in that this study found that self-devaluative statements had a significant impact on mood; in contrast, however, somatic content did not have as great an effect as they found. While there is some overlap between this study and Riskind et al. (1982), three studies that used the depressive content of the VMIP have found conflicting results. Far from being definitive, the processes that result in depressive mood are incompletely understood. A caution that needs to be expressed is that it is likely that there is no one path to the oc- currence of a particular affect. Similar to research in other areas of psychopathology, ex- amining multiple causations and variables and their complex interactions holds more promise than the search for the crucial factor.

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