Graduate Program

Clinical Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2009

Thesis Director

Russell Gruber

Thesis Committee Member

Wesley Allan

Thesis Committee Member

Amy Brausch

Abstract

Early reports of the phenomenon known as depressive realism suggest the counter-intuitive notion that depressed people are more accurate in their perception of reality. These studies have been criticized for relying solely on judging control over laboratory tasks that do not relate to real life and for the use of deception. The present study investigates the relationship between depression, anxiety, locus of control, and accuracy of judgments with an emphasis on real world occurrences, as well as examining individuals' confidence in their judgments. While depression, anxiety, and locus of control were all found to be highly correlated, significant results were not found regarding reported emotional distress and accuracy of judgment. Implications for the depressive realism hypothesis are discussed, along with major difficulties in attempting to apply real world judgments to the depressive realism phenomenon. The present findings suggest that depressive realism may not generalize from laboratory settings, and that individuals with depression and anxiety may not be more accurate in their judgments.

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