Weird revelation...
May. 16th, 2002 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerA long time ago, I heard of a research paper. Now, granted, this was a newspaper reporting on a research paper, so bear that in mind.
The newspapers said that "depressed people are better at perceiving reality than non-depressed people".
The testing was like this: take several people, depressed, and not. Ask them to try to control some lights by buttons and switches and so forth. Ask how much control they exerted over the lights.
The lights were random; people had no control over them. (At least, this was part of the experiment. They may have had other trials, where people had varying levels of control over the lights). Depressed people figured this out better than nondepressed people.
The revelation is one that seems obvious in hindsight... all this might say is that depressed people feel hopeless, and are quicker to assume hopelessness than nondepressed people. Since feelings of hopelessness are one of the symptoms of depression, this might well be saying nothing more than "depressed people are depressed".
What really makes me go "whoa..." inside my head is that I realized that the "no control" was the worst way to try to measure this, if you were to link it to 'reality'. You'd need to have "slight control" and "major control" and "full control. You could only say depressed people saw "reality" better if they spotted 'slight control' better than nondepressed folks.
Of course, keep in mind that the scientists may have been explaining the results to journalists "so, you see, depressed people see a hopeless situation as hopeless very quickly", and the reporters heard "Oh, so they see 'true' hopelessness quicker"
The newspapers said that "depressed people are better at perceiving reality than non-depressed people".
The testing was like this: take several people, depressed, and not. Ask them to try to control some lights by buttons and switches and so forth. Ask how much control they exerted over the lights.
The lights were random; people had no control over them. (At least, this was part of the experiment. They may have had other trials, where people had varying levels of control over the lights). Depressed people figured this out better than nondepressed people.
The revelation is one that seems obvious in hindsight... all this might say is that depressed people feel hopeless, and are quicker to assume hopelessness than nondepressed people. Since feelings of hopelessness are one of the symptoms of depression, this might well be saying nothing more than "depressed people are depressed".
What really makes me go "whoa..." inside my head is that I realized that the "no control" was the worst way to try to measure this, if you were to link it to 'reality'. You'd need to have "slight control" and "major control" and "full control. You could only say depressed people saw "reality" better if they spotted 'slight control' better than nondepressed folks.
Of course, keep in mind that the scientists may have been explaining the results to journalists "so, you see, depressed people see a hopeless situation as hopeless very quickly", and the reporters heard "Oh, so they see 'true' hopelessness quicker"
