Attentional biases in depression depend on social comparison priming and information valence in an eye-tracking study

Abstract

The experimental study examined automatic and volitional attention processes as function of social comparison priming (directional: upward differences, downward differences, similarities; and non-directional control) and the valence of information (i.e., positive vs. negative feature) about an unfamiliar person. A total of 209 individuals, including those clinically depressed and without the diagnosis, were exposed to a list of 50 adjectives describing a stranger across four experimental conditions: upward, downward and similarity-based comparisons and control). Regarding automatic attention, depressed individuals showed delayed attentional orienting to information about a stranger compared to non-depressed group, but oriented faster to positive than to negative features. In terms of volitional attention, under social comparison conditions (except downward comparisons), depressed individuals spent less time attending to negative information than non-depressed individuals. By contrast, within the depressed group, participants allocated more attention to negative than to positive features across all comparison conditions except upward comparisons. Attentional biases in depression vary by processing stage and social comparison context, identifying social comparison as a key modulator of emotional attention and a source of inconsistencies in prior findings.