Mood disorders and menopause

Studies of depressive symptoms in menopausal women indicate that menopause is not associated with increased rates of depression, although mild mood and anxiety symptoms may occur in the few years prior to menopause. Women with previous affective disorders that are cyclic or that are associated with reproductive events may be at increased risk for depression at menopause. Because women presenting to menopause clinics are more likely to have affective disorders, the efficacy of estrogen for enhancing mood is an important question. Although some researchers suggest that estrogens have proven mood-elevating and antidepressant properties, others caution that the psychologic benefits of HRT deserve more systematic study before conclusions can be made. It has been suggested that minor psychologic symptoms at menopause or psychologic symptoms accompanied by vasomotor symptoms warrant a trial of HRT before considering psychotropic medication. If the psychologic symptoms do not respond to HRT, are not accompanied by vasomotor symptoms, or are clinically severe, antidepressant medication should be considered first or in addition to HRT. The psychologic effects of progesterone and androgens are less extensively studied than those of estrogen, and further research is needed.     

Mood, reasoning, and central executive processes.

How positive induced mood states affect reasoning was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, consistent with resource allocation theory (H. C. Ellis & P. W. Ashbrook, 1987), both positive and negative mood suppressed performance on a deontic version of Wason's selection task (P. W. Cheng & K. J. Holyoak, 1985)—participants confirmed where they normally falsify. Experiment 2 revealed the same confirmatory responses for participants performing a concurrent distracter task, indicating that induced mood states suppress reasoning by depleting central executive resources. This hypothesis was directly tested in Experiment 3. Participants in a positive, but not in a negative, mood state showed suppressed performance on the Tower of London task (T. Shallice, 1982)—the classical central executive task. The robust positive mood effects and the confirmation effects are discussed in terms of the D. A. Norman and T. Shallice (1986) model of central executive function and recent accounts of selection task performance (L. Cosmides, 1989; K. I. Manktelow & D. E. Over, 1991; M. Oaksford & N. Chater, 1994). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood, self-awareness, and willingness to help.

Two experiments using female subjects investigated the effects of mood and self-focused attention on the willingness to help another. Experiment 1 induced a positive, negative, or neutral mood and also two kinds of high self-awareness (by either the mirror procedure or requiring essays) as well as a low self-awareness condition. Experiment 2 used a different technique to induce the three moods and also established either high or low attention to the self with the mirror procedure. In both studies, self-awareness did not interact significantly with mood in affecting the subjects' reported feelings, although there were indications in Experiment 2 of an intensification of the negative mood under self-focus. Furthermore, in both studies self-awareness operated together with the positive mood to increase the subjects' effort in behalf of the supplicant, whereas the joint operation of self-focus and negative mood was much weaker. Also in the second experiment, self-awareness raised the frequency of positive ideas about the self in the happy subjects and increased the frequency of negative self-ideas in the negative mood group. In a multiple regression analysis, these frequencies of positive and negative ideas about the self, but not a mood index, successfully predicted the amount of work the subject did for the supplicant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Person perception, marriage adjustment, and social desirability.

Extended B. Murstein's (see record 1971-26678-001) stimulus-value-role theory to account for the relationship of person perception scores to marital adjustment. The hypotheses predicted that (a) similarity, self-acceptance, accuracy of predicting other's responses, and role compatibility would be correlated with marital adjustment; (b) when the perceptual target was the man, the correlation with marital adjustment would be higher than when it was a woman; (c) women would show a higher self-acceptance-marital-adjustment correlation than men; and (d) intraperceptions would be more highly correlated with marital adjustment than interperceptions. 60 young married middle-class couples took a 20 adjective bipolar checklist under 8 different "sets" (self, ideal self, spouse, ideal spouse, and predictions of these 4 sets for the partner). Results generally support the hypotheses. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term marriage: Age, gender, and satisfaction.

Long-term marriages (N?=?156) varying in spouses' age (40–50 yrs or 60–70 yrs) and relative marital satisfaction (satisfied and dissatisfied) were studied. Spouses independently completed demographic, marital, and health questionnaires and then participated in a laboratory-based procedure focused on areas of conflict and sources of pleasure. Findings supported a positive view of older marriages. Compared with middle-aged marriages, older couples evidenced (1) reduced potential for conflict and greater potential for pleasure in several areas (including children), (2) equivalent levels of overall mental and physical health, and (3) lesser gender differences in sources of pleasure. The relation between marital satisfaction and health was stronger for women than for men. In satisfied marriages, wives' and husbands' health was equivalent; in dissatisfied marriages, wives reported more mental and physical health problems than did their husbands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood and absence.

While viewing absence as a mechanism of mood control, I explored the impact of mood at work on absenteeism, taking into account situational influences. Among a sample of 210 salespeople, I found that positive mood at work was significantly and negatively associated with absenteeism. Adjustment to the work situation as indexed by tenure also was influential for absence behavior. In addition, the personality traits, positive affectivity, and negative affectivity had significant effects on the extent to which workers experienced positive moods and negative moods, respectively. The implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood and memory.

Describes experiments in which happy or sad moods were induced in Ss by hypnotic suggestion to investigate the influence of emotions on memory and thinking. Results show that (a) Ss exhibited mood-state-dependent memory in recall of word lists, personal experiences recorded in a daily diary, and childhood experiences; (b) Ss recalled a greater percentage of those experiences that were affectively congruent with the mood they were in during recall; (c) emotion powerfully influenced such cognitive processes as free associations, imaginative fantasies, social perceptions, and snap judgments about others' personalities; (d) when the feeling-tone of a narrative agreed with the reader's emotion, the salience and memorability of events in that narrative were increased. An associative network theory is proposed to account for these results. In this theory, an emotion serves as a memory unit that can enter into associations with coincident events. Activation of this emotion unit aids retrieval of events associated with it; it also primes emotional themata for use in free association, fantasies, and perceptual categorization. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood, memory, and social judgments in children.

The influence of positive and negative moods on children's recall and recognition memory and impression-formation judgments was investigated in a two-list experimental design. A total of 161 schoolchildren, 8 to 10 years old, were presented with audiovisual information containing positive and negative details about 2 target children. Each presentation was preceded by happy or sad mood manipulations. One day later, the children were again placed in a happy or sad mood, and their recall and recognition memory and impression-formation judgments were assessed. Results showed that memory was better when (a) the children felt happy during encoding, retrieval, or both; (b) the material was incongruent with learning mood; (c) the 2 target characters were encountered in contrasting rather than in matching mood states; and (d) recall mood matched encoding mood. A happy mood increased the extremity of both positive and negative impression-formation judgments. Results are contrasted with experimental data obtained with normal or depressed adults, and implications are considered for contemporary theories of mood effects on cognition and for social-developmental research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood regulation expectancies, anxiety sensitivity, and emotional distress.

Mood regulation expectancy is a behavior–outcome response expectancy; anxiety sensitivity can be conceptualized as a stimulus–outcome response expectancy. Current expectancy models of emotion and distress focus on stimulus–outcome expectancies, potentially neglecting behavior–outcome expectancies. In a sample of 502 college students, measures of each expectancy were independently related to distress, measured by the Beck Depression Inventory and Trait Anxiety Inventory: Those with weak beliefs about their ability to regulate negative moods and strong beliefs that the experience of anxiety causes further negative consequences reported the highest levels of distress. Implications for integrating behavior–outcome and stimulus–outcome response expectancies in models of emotion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding and similarity in marriage.

The following conclusions appear to be justified: (1) There is no evidence that happiness in marriage is a function of understanding the mate or is related to the similarity of selves of the mates. (2) Evidence indicates that marital happiness is associated with similarity of self perceptions of the mates. (3) Husbands and wives are no more similar in self perceptions than randomly paired men and women. (4) Marital happiness is related to the conformity of men to self perceptions of their sex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dreams about the therapist: Mood, interactions, and themes.

Analyzed the mood, interactions, and themes in the manifest dream representations reported by 67 25–71 yr old psychotherapist volunteers, who each reported 1 dream about his/her own therapist. Ss tended to have unpleasant dreams featuring therapists who were frustrating or gratifying. In the dreams, friendly, aggressive, and sexual interactions were initiated by therapists; only the friendly interactions tended to be reciprocated. Four overarching themes emerged: separation-rejection, seduction-antagonism, protectiveness-responsiveness, and praise. It is proposed that these characteristic ways of dreaming about the therapist depict issues of central importance for many patients, and reflect patients' effective use of the transference to work on their concerns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood, recall, and sensitivity effects in normal college students.

Three experiments with 578 undergraduates explored the relation between normal variation in depressed mood and memory. Mood was assessed via the Beck Depression Inventory and Multiple Affect Adjective Check List. Ss read and subsequently recalled stories, in which protagonists experienced good, bad, and neutral events. Contrary to predictions arising independently from capacity theory and from schema theory, the recall of depressed and nondepressed Ss did not differ in either overall level or in affective content. Results are not easily handled by a conceptualization of depression linked with schema theory, which proposes that negative cognitions are important for the initiation and maintenance of depression. The general usefulness of induction procedures in research on the depressive syndrome is discussed. (69 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological patterning in marriage.

Theory and research are reviewed and integrated with sociological data on mate selection and marital happiness. Topics included are homogamy, interpersonal perception, identifications, complimentary needs, and role theory. Modal marriage-role expectations exist; they are different for the sexes, and are established by parental identifications. The husband role is more instrumental; the wife role more integrative. For the marital happiness of both spouses, the husband's role performance is more crucial than that of the wife. For all marriages—both modal and unique—happiness is a function of the satisfaction of those needs and expectations which, for each individual, are specific to marriage. Thus, investigation of role-specific need dispositions is preferable to conventional approaches which deal with general personality needs. (82 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood, pleasant events, and unpleasant events: Two pilot studies.

Assessed the relationship between mood and both pleasant and unpleasant events in 2 studies with a total of 34 undergraduates. Ss made self-ratings of mood and kept daily logs of pleasant and unpleasant events for approximately 2 wks. Intrasubject correlations in both studies suggested that mood was related to pleasant and unpleasant events independently. Intersubject correlations were consistent but nonsignificant. Cross-lagged correlations were significantly less than same-day correlations. Weighted event scores produced marginally higher correlations with mood than unweighted scores. Minor sex differences are noted. Implications of these results for theory and practice are discussed. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood, attention, and altruism: A search for mediating variables.

Elementary schoolchildren were given a mood induction, followed by measures of generosity and incidental attention. As in a previous study, there was a linear increase in generosity from sad to control to happy conditions. Attention did not appear to mediate the mood–generosity relation. There was a curvilinear relation between age and generosity, with younger children being more generous than expected from previous findings of a linear relation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood changes, physiological responses, and self-statements during social rejection imagery.

Exp I, partially replicating M. Goldfried and D. Sobocinski's (see record 1975-26824-001) methodology, evaluated the cognitive behavioral assumption that one's images and correct verbalizations mediate emotional and physiological arousal. Ss were 32 female university students who scored at the extremes on the importance of social approval scale from the Irrational Beliefs Test. It was hypothesized that relative to the low-irrational Ss, high-irrational ones would emit more negative and fewer positive tasks- and self-referent self-statements, report greater emotional arousal, and exhibit greater increases in physiological arousal while visualizing social rejection scenes. The major finding was that the groups differed significantly in the frequency of negative self-referent self-statements; virtually no support was obtained for the other hypotheses. Exp II, which used 24 females and which did not employ self-statements or physiological measures but was otherwise similar to Exp I, was a more exact replication of the Goldfried and Sobocinski study. Exp III, with 36 Ss, was a complete replication of the Goldfried and Sobocinski study. The data from the latter 2 studies indicate no differences in the reported moods of high- and low-irrational Ss following visualizations of social rejection scenes. Conceptual and clinical implications are discussed. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social support, problem solving, and the longitudinal course of newlywed marriage.

Married couples (N = 172) were observed as newlyweds and observed again 1 year later while engaging in 2 problem-solving and 2 personal support discussions. Microanalytic coding of these conversations was used to examine associations between problem-solving and social support behaviors for 1 year and their relative contributions to 10-year trajectories of self-reported relationship satisfaction and dissolution. Results demonstrated that initially lower levels of positive support behaviors and higher levels of negative support behaviors predicted 1-year increases in negative emotion displayed during problem-solving conversations. Emotions coded from the initial problem-solving conversations did not predict 1-year changes in social support behaviors. Controlling for emotions displayed during problem-solving interactions eliminated or reduced associations between initial social support behaviors and (a) later levels of satisfaction and (b) relationship dissolution. These findings corroborate models that prioritize empathy, validation, and caring as key elements in the development of intimacy (e.g., Reis & Shaver, 1988) and suggest that deficits in these domains foreshadow deterioration in problem solving and conflict management. Implications for integrating support and problem solving in models of relationship change are outlined, as are implications for incorporating social support in education programs for developing relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Love, marriage, and divorce: Newlyweds' stress hormones foreshadow relationship changes.

Neuroendocrine function, assessed in 90 couples during their first year of marriage (Time 1), was related to marital dissolution and satisfaction 10 years later. Compared to those who remained married, epinephrine levels of divorced couples were 34% higher during a Time 1 conflict discussion, 22% higher throughout the day, and both epinephrine and norepinephrine were 16% higher at night. Among couples who were still married, Time 1 conflict ACTH levels were twice as high among women whose marriages were troubled 10 years later than among women whose marriages were untroubled. Couples whose marriages were troubled at follow-up produced 34% more norepinephrine during conflict, 24% more norepinephrine during the daytime, and 17% more during nighttime hours at Time 1 than the untroubled. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood and the formation of attitudes.

Conducted 2 studies to examine how mood influences the attitudes formed by 72 undergraduates (Study 1) and 45 undergraduates (Study 2). After reading the Velten mood induction cards, Ss were presented with positive and negative belief statements about an unfamiliar attitude object. Measures of attitudes, statements recalled, and evaluations of statements were taken. In both studies, mood was shown to influence attitudes. Moreover, in Study 1, Ss evaluated both positive and negative statements in line with their mood. These results are consistent with the research of D. M. Mackie and L. T. Worth (see record 1989-31851-001) on the effects of positive mood on persuasion and suggest that negative mood may also operate to encourage the use of heuristic processing of information. No evidence was found for a mood-congruity effect in either study. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood as input and catatrophic worrying.

The authors describe 3 experiments investigating a "mood-as-input" approach to understanding catastrophic worrying. Experiment 1 found that induced negative mood increased the number of steps emitted in both a catastrophizing interview procedure and a positive iteration task. Experiment 2 found that the number of items that worriers emitted in an iterative item generation task was dependent on the stop rules specified by the procedure. Experiment 3 found that manipulating the stop rules for catastrophizing had differential effects on worriers and nonworriers, depending on the nature of the stop rules specified. These results suggest that mood provides information about continuing or terminating the catastrophizing process that is interpreted in the context of the stop rules for the task. It is argued that the mood-as-input hypothesis accounts for the facts of exacerbated catastrophizing in worriers better than explanations couched in terms of either mood congruency effects or worriers possessing a generalized perseverative iterative style. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)