Self-schemas,stress, and depressed mood in college students

Beck's (1987) cognitive model of depression provided a vulnerability-stress framework for assessing the relationship between self-schemas, recent negative life events, and depressed mood. Decision times required to makeme/not me judgments of trait adjectives were used to measure the self-schemas of college students. When stress levels were high, the positivity of the schema was inversely related to the level of depressive symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). When students' stress was low, self-schemas were not related to BDI scores. The interaction of self-schemas and stress occurred when the schemas were in domains relevant to symptoms of depression, but not when the schemas were irrelevant.This research was supported by a Marquette University Sabbatical Fellowship and a National Research Service Award to Lucinda McClain, as well as by a Romnes Fellowship and grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin and NIMH (R01MH43866) to Lyn Y. Abramson.