Self-focused attention, gender, gender role, and vulnerability to negative affect.
Research has independently shown that both gender and self-focused attention are linked to depression. In this article, we report a series of studies investigating the relation between these variables. Using a standard self-focusing manipulation, Study 1 suggested that women evidence a greater propensity to self-focus than men. We replicated these findings in Study 2. In Study 3, we conducted an experiment to determine if sex role in conjunction with experimentally increased self-focused attention would lead to more emotional distress after a negative event had occurred. Results suggested that feminine individuals who received a self-focusing manipulation responded with greater levels of self-focused attention and negative affect than did any other group. We interpreted findings in terms of a tendency to self-focus that might prime feminine people to experience depression, or alternately, as a lack of self-focusing that may insulate masculine individuals from the experience of depression.
Ingram
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Doctoral Training Facility, San Diego State University, California 92182-0551.
Cruet
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D
Johnson
B R
BR
Wisnicki
K S
KS
D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D012647:Self-Assessment