Future-Event Schemas and Attributional Inferences

建议的研究的目的是检查可能的自动影响存储的知识结构的初始阶段的社会推理过程。 特别感兴趣的是未来事件图式的影响，这已被证明是典型的中度和严重抑郁的知觉，并导致悲观的预测事件发生。 本研究提出的理论框架认为，以往的研究者未能发现抑郁相关的差异，在性格和情境推断他人的结果，因为他们没有采用更先进的模型和更合适的调查方法来检查的推理过程。 更具体地说，有人认为，以前的失败，发现抑郁-非抑郁的差异，实际上是由于（未经审查）的行为表征和推理过程的推理校正阶段的相互作用。 这项拟议中的研究将检验这样一种观点，即中度和重度抑郁的人在对他人做出判断时，会试图弥补自己的负面看法。 起初，抑郁的人被认为会对他人的积极和消极成就做出不利的解释。 然而，通过进行额外的思考，抑郁症患者有时能够纠正这种偏见。 因此，这些人经常表现出对他人行为做出公正推断的样子。 如果得到证实，这种纠正偏见的过程可能对促进人类潜力产生重要影响。 在日常生活中，人们经常会分心或以其他方式进行思考，因此无法进行推理纠正。 因此，他们的社会互动和评价可能会被他们对他人行为的负面偏见所影响。 反过来，这可能会产生非常严重的负面影响。 例如，在教育和其他与工作有关的环境中，已经确定了许多压力源和其他心理健康问题（特别是抑郁症）。 在这种情况下，教师和监督者很可能无法纠正他们对他人表现的消极偏见和自动归因和评价。 社会和经济后果可能对学生和雇员非常重要。

The purpose of the proposed research is to examine the possible automatic influence of stored knowledge structures on the initial stages of the social inference process. Of particular interest is the effect of future-event schemata which have been shown to typify moderately and severely depressed perceivers and to result in pessimistic predictions of event occurrences. The theoretical framework developed in this proposal argues that previous researchers have failed to find the depression-related differences in dispositional and situational inferences for others' outcomes because they have failed to employ more recent and sophisticated models of and more appropriate investigative methods for examining the inference process. More specifically, it is argued that previous failures to find depressed-nondepressed differences actually have resulted from the (unexamined) interactive effects of behavior characterization and inferential correction stages of the inference process. %%% The proposed research will examine the idea that moderately and severely depressed people try to compensate for their negative views when making judgments about other people. At first, depressed people are thought to develop unfavorable explanations for other people's positive and negative accomplishments. However, by engaging in additional thought, depressed people are sometimes able to correct for this bias. As a result, such people often give the appearance of making unbiased inferences about others' actions. If confirmed, this bias-correcting process could have important implications for the promotion of human potential. In everyday situations, people are often distracted or otherwise engaged in thought, and therefore unable to engage in inferential correction. As a result, their social interactions and evaluations may be colored by their negatively-biased characterizations of others' behaviors. This, in turn, can have very large negative consequences. For example, in educational and other work-related settings, numerous stressors and other mental health problems (notably depression) have been identified. In such settings, teachers and supervisors may well be unable to correct their negatively-biased, automatic attributions for and evaluations of others' performances. The social and economic consequences may be very significant for students and employees.