title: Self-focused attention, gender, gender role, and vulnerability to negative affect.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Doctoral Training Facility, San Diego State University, California 92182-0551.
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Ingram
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cruet
authors.forename: B R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: K S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Wisnicki
mesh_terms: 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