Some factors influencing the effect of depressed mood on anger and overt hostility toward another

JOURNAL

OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY

23,

70-84 (1989)

Some Factors Influencing the Effect of Depressed Mood on Anger and Overt Hostility toward Another RONA FINMAN University

AND

LEONARD

of Wisconsin,

BERKOWITZ

Madison

According to Berkowitz’s (1983, American Psychologist, 38, 1135-l 144) analysis of aversively stimulated aggression, negative affect produces a rudimentary experience of anger along with an instigation to aggression, while higher order cognitive processing activated by deliberate thought can then intervene to intluence the specific nature of the emotional experience as well as the overt behavior exhibited. Following this reasoning, it was assumed that (a) depressed mood generates angry feelings and hostile inclinations, (b) awareness of one’s feelings leads to the regulation of the expression of these feelings and inclinations, and (c) people classified as repressors by the Byrne R-S scale would tend to avoid awareness of their negative affect in comparison to sensitizers. Supporting this argument, it was found that the subjects, university women, expressed the greatest hostility toward a target person when (1) they had been placed in a depressed mood, (2) were identified as repressors, and (3) were required to indicate their opinions of the target quickly and with little thought. At least some of the impulsive hostility displayed by depressives might thus be due to the unpleasantness of their feelings. 0 1989 Academic Press, Inc.

Researchers and clinicians have long noted a relationship between depression and aggression. The clinical literature abounds with observations of relatively strong hostility in both depressed adults (Berkowitz, 1983; Busse, 1959; Friedman, 1970) and children (Cytryn & McKnew, 1974; Glaser, 1967; Kovacs & Beck, 1977; Ling, Oftedal, & Weinberg, 1972; Poznanski & Zrull, 1970; Toolan, 1962). But while there are these frequent reports, the question remains as to why there is any linkage at all between depression and aggression. Cognitive theories of depression typically do not posit such a connection. They emphasize the apathy and passivity characteristic of this syndrome and have relatively little to say about the hostile feelings and actions that might also accompany it (Miller & Norman, 1979). Indeed, some analyses, notably the learned helplessness model of depression, predict a lack of effortful instrumental responding by Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Berkowitz at the Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706. 70 0092-6566l89 $3.00 Copyright Q 1989 by Academic Press. Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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depressed animals and people (Miller and Seligman, 1975), suggesting that the felt depression should be associated with little overt aggression. Contrary to such an implication, however, a number of investigators have observed hostile reactions in normal subjects experimentally induced to have depressive feelings (see Miller & Norman, 1979, for a review). Thus, laboratory participants exposed to noncontigency conditions generating learned helplessness have been found to express relatively high levels of anger on post-experimental questionnaires (Roth & Kubal, 1975) and on the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (Miller & Seligman, 1975). These demonstrations of depression preceding anger are also somewhat troublesome for those psychodynamic theories postulating that depression is anger turned inward (e.g., Abraham, 1960). However valid these latter theories might be in some instances, we here see a depressive mood giving rise to angry feelings rather than the anger producing discontent with the self. In contrast to these formulations, Berkowitz’s (1983) conception of aversively stimulated aggression can account for the depression-anger linkage. Simply put, his analysis holds that the negative affect arising from an aversive event activates both flight and fight tendencies and their associated expressive-motor reactions, feelings, thoughts, and memories, along with other possible responses. The flight tendencies presumably include an instigation to aggression as well as the sensations, ideas, and memories associated with the experience of anger, while the flight tendencies are said to include the inclination to escape/avoid the unpleasant stimulus along with the sensations, ideas, and memories linked to experienced fear. A variety of factors, situational, learned, and genetic, theoretically determine the relative strengths of these two classes of tendencies. The basic evidence for this cognitive-neoassociationistic model comes from a growing body of research, noted by other writers (e.g., Baron, 1977; Uhich, 1966; Zillmann, 1979) as well as Berkowitz (1983) showing that an impressively broad range of unpleasant conditions can produce aggressive reactions. These observations have not always been interpreted in the same way by aggression theorists but other findings lend additional support to Berkowitz’s analysis. As one example, Diener and Iran-Nejad (1986) have reported that anger and fear frequently occur together. When their respondents rated their feelings during whatever emotional episodes they encountered over a period of weeks, the respondents indicated that at least some of the incidents gave rise to both fear and anger. And then too, Rule, Taylor, and Dobbs (1987) have demonstrated that aversive events tend to heighten the accessibility of aggressive thoughts even when unpleasant occurrences are not unfairly or illegitimately imposed. Although Berkowitz’s account of aversively stimulated aggression has

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a number of unique features, it also makes some distinctions similar to those drawn by such other theorists as Buss (1961) and Feshbach and Feshbach (1986). The model differentiates among anger, hostility, and instigation to aggression, holding that these terms refer to somewhat different, although correlated, processes. Anger is regarded as a perceptual experience growing largely (but not entirely) out of people’s awareness of the aggression-related physiological changes, expressive-motor reactions, and ideas and memories activated in them by the aversive event, while the instigation to aggression is viewed as an inclination to do harm that may or may not be accompanied by a conscious anger experience. Thus, from this perspective, anger as an experience parallels but does not cause the aversively stimulated instigation to aggression. Hostility is related to aggression but refers to an unfavorable judgment or opinion of another. While such a judgment can have several different roots, it often stems from the negative ideas and memories as well as the aggressive instigation that are evoked in the unpleasant situation. The present paper deals with reports of angry feelings and expressions of hostile judgments and attempts to show that a depressive mood, as one type of negative affect, can give rise to anger and hostility. This is not to say, however, that the anger and hostility will always be revealed openly or even be present as time goes by after the aversive occurrence. Employing depth of processing notions, Berkowitz suggests that the rudimentary feelings initially activated by the unpleasant event can be affected or even transformed by additional cognitive processing involving appraisals, attributions, and other interpretations. This higher order, controlled processing does not always operate but has to be activated by an incentive to think more extensively and “deeply” about the available information (Harkness, DeBono, & Borgida, 1985). Once activated, however, this processing can differentiate the initial experience, intensify or suppress the feelings that come into focal awareness, determine what ideas come to mind, and regulate the overt display of feelings and behavior. This controlled processing thus influences the extent to which the negative affect-generated anger, hostility, and instigation to aggression are revealed openly. In this regard, Berkowitz assumes that one of the conditions activating the regulatory mechanisms involves attention to the self and especially attention to one’s feelings. Carver and Scheier (1981) have published findings in line with this contention, but recent experiments in Berkowitz’s laboratory are especially apropos. In this research, Troccoli and Berkowitz (1987) demonstrated that the induction of a depressive mood led to stronger hostility toward an available target person than did a happier mood except when the subjects’ attention was specifically drawn to their feelings by the experimental manipulation. The awareness of the negative feelings

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apparently had activated control mechanisms minimizing the impact of these feelings on overt behavior. The present experiment is a further investigation of this general line of reasoning. Testing Berkowitz’s model rather than all of the various conceptions of aversively generated aggression, it asks whether certain kinds of persons are especially apt to regulate their display of negative affect-produced hostility, presumably as a result of their attention to themselves. Existing evidence indicates that personality traits might well intervene to influence the impact of unpleasant feelings on hostility toward others. In a study published after the present research was completed, Hynan and Grush (1986) showed that characteristically impulsive men who were made to feel depressed delivered reliably more intense shocks to a target person than did other equally depressed but nonimpulsive subjects. The former apparently were comparatively unlikely to control the impact of their negative mood on their treatment of the other person. Berkowitz (1983) had anticipated this result, in a sense, when he suggested that the aggressive inclination evoked by depression is more apt to be revealed in impulsive outbursts than in deliberate, effortful attempts to injure another. The present formulation also suggests that personality characteristics affecting people’s awareness of their negative feelings might also influence the depressed mood-aggression relationship. These personal qualities could be tapped by the repressor-sensitizer scale described by Bell and Byrne (1978). According to these writers, repressors tend to avoid thinking about their unpleasant feelings while sensitizers are more apt to become aware of their feelings and ruminate upon them in their thoughts. An experiment by Hare (1966) is just one of the studies supporting the BellByrne conception. When the subjects in this study were threatened by electric shocks, those persons scoring as repressors typically were more highly aroused physiologically than the sensitizers, but still the former were more likely to report that they avoided thinking about the shocks. By contrast, the sensitizers tended to say they had focused their thoughts on the shocks to come. On the basis of these findings and the reasoning guiding the present research, we expect repressors to be relatively likely to display their negative affect-generated aggressive inclinations in open hostility toward an available target, but especially when situational demands direct their attention outward. Presumably because both their personality disposition and the situational requirements cause them to give little attention to their unpleasant feelings, control processes are less apt to be fully activated in them that would weaken the impact of these feelings on their judgments. The highly impulsive subjects in the Hynan and Grush (1986) experiment mentioned earlier might have shown their depression-induced aggression

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openly because they typically did not take sufficient time to reflect on their negative mood. Putting this consideration together with our other arguments, repressors should exhibit the greatest overt hostility when they (a) are depressed and (b) have to respond quickly and with little thought to the situation before them. The present experiment was designed to assess this analysis. Female subjects previously determined to have either repressor or sensitizer tendencies were placed in either a depressed or neutral mood and then were required to judge another person, either hurriedly and with little time to think or in a more deliberate and thoughtful fashion.’ As we have just proposed, we expect the repressors’ evaluations to be affected by both experimental variations; they should be most hostile in what they say about the target person when they are depressed and have to provide their judgments very quickly. On the other hand, the depressed sensitizers might well “lean over backwards” to avoid displaying any overt hostility, especially when they have time to think about their evaluations. All of the women presumably realize that any severe judgments they express might seem unfair and could therefore bring social disapproval. But the sensitizers, in being highly conscious of their hostile inclinations and having ample time to consider the possible unfavorable consequences of these urges, might try so hard to overcome their hostile tendencies that they publicly evaluate the target person in a relatively favorable manner. METHOD Subjects Ninety-six female undergraduates recruited from introductory psychology classes served in the experiment in exchange for extra credits counting toward their course grade. All of the participants had completed the Repressor-Sensitizer Scale as part of a general testing session in their classes at the start of the semester, and the present subjects were either in the upper-third (repressors) or lower-third (sensitizers) of the distribution of scores on the R-S Scale. One other person had also participated in the experiment but her data were discarded prior to the analysis because she had apparently responded to the mood scales incorrectly.

Procedure Personality variations. The R-S Scale (Byrne, 1961) consists of 127 true/false items such as “Once in a while I think of things too bad to talk about,” and “I am certainly lacking in confidence.” The scale has a high internal consistency (Cronbach’s (Y = .94 in both Byrne’s original sample and the present sample). As indicated earlier, a number of experimental findings support the measure’s construct validity (Bell & Byrne, 1978). ’ Where most experiments on aggression have been conducted with males, the present investigation, employing females, allows a determination of the degree to which our theoretical model applies to women who presumably would be more reticient than men to display their aggressive inclinations and hostility in overt behavior.

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Laborurory procedure. The experimenter (the first author) contacted each woman by telephone sometime during the course of the semester and asked her to serve in an “experiment about imagination.” No mention was made of the personality testing, and the person was not told the reason for her selection. If she agreed to participate, she was assigned to a repressor or sensitizer condition, depending upon her R-S Scale score, and then was randomly placed in one of the four experimental conditions established by the variations in induced mood (depressed or neutral) and the required speed of response to the target person (quick or slow). When the subject came to the laboratory at the scheduled time, she was met by the experimenter; she was told the investigation was concerned with the effects of imaginative processes on the perception of others. Then, after briefly outlining what would happen in the study (first the subject’s imagination would be stimulated and then she would evaluate another student), the experimenter asked the woman to sign the proferred consent form if she was willing to serve. Mood induction and assessment. The first experimental manipulation was introduced after the form was signed. The participant was informed that she would read a series of statements designed to stimulate her imagination and was given a set of 50 cards taken from the Velten (1968) mood induction procedure. In a slight variation from the usual instructions,* the subject was asked to use her imagination while reading each card and to visualize how the statement might apply to her. The experimenter was out of the room as the subject went through the cards. Half of the participants read the depressive statements and the others the neutral cards. This particular mood induction procedure was employed because many published findings indicate that it can successfully establish mood differences (e.g., Clark, 1983) and that the results are not merely due to “demand” compliance (cf. Berkowitz & Troccoli, 1986). When the subject finished reading and visualizing the statements, she pressed an electric switch, signaling the experimenter to return. The experimenter entered the room, gave the woman the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (Zuckerman, 1%8), and again left. In responding to the 138 items, the participant was to indicate which adjectives applied to her present mood and which did not. Reactions to target person. After this was done, the experimenter returned to start a tape recording supposedly made a year earlier by another female student for another experiment. The subject was informed this woman had been asked to make a brief, candid autobiographical statement in which she reported both good and bad aspects of her personality. The statement had a slightly negative cast to it in that the speaker confessed to some misbehaviors while in high school.’ At the completion of the approximately Z-min-long recording, the experimenter provided the instructions for the subject’s assessment of the taped woman. The experimenter then went to her control room next door, turned on the intercom system, and read aloud a series of questions about the taped person to which the subject would have to respond. Speed of response. The last experimental variation had to do with how quickly the ’ Although it is very common for researchers following the Velten procedure to tell their subjects that the cards are intended to induce a particular mood, in the present case the participants were informed that the cards were designed to stimulate their imagination in a particular manner. 3 The target was given a slightly negative cast because at this early time in our research we thought it was advisable to lessen the subjects’ usual reluctance to express unfavorable judgments of another person. However, later findings (e.g., Troccoli & Berkowitz, 1987) have shown that conceptually similar results are obtained even when the subjects do not start out with a negative impression of their target.

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participant

was to answer each question read to her over the loudspeaker. In the Quick condition the woman was required to react by quickly pressing one of the six switches on the box in front of her, with each switch marking a position on a six-step rating scale. To encourage the subject to respond freely. she was asked to indicate her first reaction to each item and to be honest in her answers. She was also assured her answers would be anonymous.4 By contrast, in the Slower Response condition the subject had the entire list of questions before her as the experimenter read them off, with each of the first four items being on a separate page. As each question was read, she was to think about her answer to the item and not respond until the experimenter gave her the signal. The subject had 30 s to consider her response to each item and indicated her reaction in writing by placing a checkmark on the six-step scale accompanying the item. In all conditions, after the participant had responded to the 14 items presented to her she was given a short version of the MAACL, and then answered a brief set of questions about the experiment. When this was done, the experimenter gave each subject who had been in the depressed condition the set of elation statements from the Velten procedure in order to eliminate what remained of the induced depressive mood. She then explained the purpose of the investigation and the nature of the deceptions that had been practiced, answered all questions, and thanked the woman for her participation. Dependent measures. We are mainly interested in the subjects’ responses to three sets of measures: the mood scales, the first four items assessing the subjects’ expressed liking for the target person when they were evaluating this individual, and last 10 questions dealing with the participants’ characterization of the target person. For the mood measures the subjects’ responses to both the long (I38 adjectives) and short (60 adjectives) forms of the MAACL were scored on the three scales devised by Zuckerman tapping depression. anxiety, and angry’ feelings. The four liking-for-the-target-person items were fairly direct, and asked questions such as “How much do you think you would like this person?” and “How much do you think you would like to get to know this person better?” The possible responses to each item ranged from “probably dislike very much” at the low end to “probably like very much” at the high end of the six-step scales. The items had a satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s OL = .8). The final items in the evaluation of the target person required the subjects to indicate their impressions of the target individual’s personality. They were given a scale asking “What do you think this person would be like if you really got to know her?” and were to respond on 10 six-step bipolar scales anchored at each end by an adjective (for example, “sincere-insincere” and “cold-warm”). The scores on the 10 items were summed to yield a single index of the favorableness of the impression of the target person, and again, the internal consistency was satisfactory (a = .80).6 Both Response

4 For the interested reader, the exact statement made to the subject in this condition was as follows: “The two important things for you to do are, first to respond honestly with your feelings, and second, it is important that you respond immediately with your first reaction. Don’t sit and think about your answer but respond right away by pushing one of these six switches. Your answers are anonymous and are recorded into a computer.” 5 Zuckerman terms this a measure of “hostility” rather than “anger,” but since we think of hostility as an unfavorable judgment of another whereas anger refers to one’s feelings, which the MAACL scale reflects, we believe anger is the more appropriate word, at least for us. ’ Although these measures are operationally in accord with our definition of hostility as a negative evaluation of someone, some readers might question whether the present measures fit the person-on-the-street’s conception of hostility as involving a desire to hurt the target in some way. The present study cannot in itself answer such an objection. However. all we can do at this time is assure these readers that in later research very similar findings

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TABLE MEAN

RATINGS

ON MOOD

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HOSTILITY

1

SCALES AFTER Moor

INDUCTION

Mood scales Condition Depressed mood Sensitizers Repressors Neutral mood Sensitizers Repressors

Depression

Anxiety

Anger

21.6 13.5

9.5 6.4

8.4 6.2

12.6 6.8

6.0 2.6

3.9 3.1

Notes. The maximum possible scores are 40, 20, and 27 for the depression, anxiety, and anger scales, respectively. There were significant main effects for mood induction treatment on all three scales, and for the depression and anxiety scales also significant main effects for personality type. the liking and personality impression items were reacted to in the same manner within the quick and longer time-to-respond conditions.

RESULTS Mood Ratings

The mean scores on the three mood scales immediately after the mood induction are reported in Table 1. Analyses of variance of these data demonstrate the effectiveness of the mood manipulation. The women given the depressive mood induction treatment rated themselves as significantly more depressed, anxious, and angry than their counterparts exposed to the neutral mood statements, Fs(1, 88) = 18.99, 13.22, and 19.85, respectively, p < .OOOin all cases. The same analyses also showed that two of the mood scales were also affected by the personality difwere obtained with a “behavioral” measure based on depriving the target of rewards and with other evaluation-impression indices similar to those employed here (Troccoli & Berkowitz, 1987). Moreover, in this later research the target was supposedly aware of the subjects’ expressions of hostility. Two other observations are also worth noting. First, recall that the present participants generally expressed less liking for the target person when they had to make their ratings quickly rather than slowly. It is as if these women had held back expressing any negative attitude when they had time to consider what they were saying about the target-and thus had the time also to consider the possible implications of their ratings. And further, the results also suggest that it was the depressed persons who presumably were most inclined to be negative to the target, who were most apt to “lean over backwards” in not expressing negative judgments when they had time to consider what they were doing. Again, they apparently believed negative ratings were undesirable for some reason. All in all, these results suggest that the negative assessments of the target in the present study could well have been correlated with an inclination to hurt this target, as our theoretical model proposes.

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TABLE 2 MEAN RATINGSOF TARGET PERSON Mood induction personality Depressed mood Repressor Repressor Sensitizer Sensitizer Neutral mood Repressor Repressor Sensitizer Sensitizer

Response speed

Liking

Personality impression

Quick Slower Quick Slower

Response Response Response Response

2.6 3.2 2.9 3.7

3.1 3.5 3.3 4.2

Quick Slower Quick Slower

Response Response Response Response

3.0 3.2 2.8 3.4

3.1 3.4 3.5 3.4

Notes. For both the liking and personality impression measures the higher the score the more favorable the opinion expressed. Also for both measures the possible range is from 1 to 6.

ferences; in comparison to the repressors, the sensitizers described themselves as feeling significantly more depressed and anxious, Fs( 1, 88) = 14.83 and 10.88, p < .002, but not more angry, F( 1, 88) = 2.94. Although the mood induction was effective at first, the subjects’ ratings on the second MAACL revealed that the mood condition differences in reported feelings were no longer significant by the end of the experimental session, Fs = 1.3, 2.5, and 2.0 for the depression, anxiety, and anger scales, respectively. However, as before, the sensitizers still characterized themselves as reliably more depressed (F = 14.2, p < .OOl) and more anxious (F = 11.9, p < .OOl) than the repressors. It is also important to note that there was no significant main effect for the speed of response manipulation on the subjects’ subsequent mood scores, indicating that the Quick Response participants’ feelings were not affected simply by the requirement for fast answers. Liking for Target Person

The condition means on the liking-for-target-person measures are given in Table 2. The analysis of variance yielded only a significant main effect for the speed-of-response variation; the subjects encouraged to take time to think about their responses expressed a reliably greater liking than did the women required to react quickly, F(1, 88) = 11.33, p < .002, condition means = 3.38 and 2.83. It is as if the former people, in considering their responses, had decided it was best to rate the target person favorably rather than unfavorably. They may have thought that they would look

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better to the researcher if they seemed friendly and/or that they themselves might feel bad if they expressed unfriendliness. Although the analysis did not reveal any significant effects for personality and mood, planned comparisons were carried out to test whether the expected condition differences had occurred. The most important of these tests had to do with the depressed repressors required to react quickly. As predicted by our analysis, the people in this group openly expressed significantly less liking for the target person than did all of the other subjects pooled together, F(l, 88) = 3.59, p < .05, by one-tailed test. They also expressed less liking for the target person than all of the other depressed subjects combined, F = 4.26, p < .03, one-tailed test. Thus, in accord with the present reasoning, the induction of a depressive mood seemed to lead to the greatest display of overt hostility when the subjects (a) were presumably inclined to minimize their awareness of their negative feelings and (b) were given little time to think about their open behavior. We also examined the difference between the depressed sensitizers required to think carefully about their ratings and the other groups. As indicated earlier, although we did not have a clear theoretical basis for this prediction, we suspected that these subjects would express the greatest liking for the target person; they presumably would become aware of their depression-induced hostility, would have time to consider the possible consequences of an open display of unfriendliness, and then might react against their hostile/aggressive urges. This expectation was fulfilled. The women in this condition scored significantly higher on the liking-fortarget-person measure than all seven of the other groups pooled together, F = 4.51, p < .05, two-tailed test, and higher than all of the other depressed subjects combined, F = 5.19, p < .05, two-tailed test. Impressions

of Target’s Personality

The same analyses were carried out for the indirect measure assessing the favorableness of the subjects’ impressions of the target’s personality. Again, the preliminary ANOVA yielded only a main effect for the impulsiveness of the participants’ response, F(l, 88) = 5.09, p < .05, and again, those given more time to consider their responses expressed a more favorable judgment. Much more important are the paired comparison differences between the depressed, quick response repressors and the other subjects. In this case the results are not quite as good as those obtained with the expressed liking measure. While this particular group provided the least favorable judgments of the target’s personality, as can be seen in Table 2, the group mean was not significantly different from the mean of all the other participants combined, F = 1.9. Nevertheless, as with the liking measure, the depressed repressors responding quickly offered reliably less favorable

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TABLE CORRELATIONS

BETWEEN

SELF-REPORTED

TARGET

Opinion on liking measure Repressors Sensitizers Personality impression Repressors Sensitizers

3

DEPRESSION

SCORES AND EXPRESSED OPINION

OF

PERSON

Quick Response

Slower Response

Difference

- .43” + .09

+.19 +.15

t = 2.10h ns

-.03 +.14

-.Ol +.27

ns ns

Note. A positive correlation means that higher depression is related to a more favorable expressed opinion. o The correlation is significant at p = .03. b The difference between the two correlations is significant at p < .05.

evaluations of the target’s personality than did any of the other depressed groups, F = 3.5, p < .05, by one-tailed test. Presumably because they were not greatly aware of their negative feelings and also lacked sufficient time to consider these feelings and their reactions to the target person, these women evidently had not controlled the impact of their depressiongenerated hostility on their judgments of the target. Table 2 also shows that the depressed slowly responding sensitizers had responded much the same way on the personality impression index as on the liking measure, and the paired comparisons revealed the same pattern of significant differences. As before, these participants had apparently become greatly aware of their hostile inclinations and then reacted against this hostility so that they expressed the most favorable evaluations of the target’s personality: more favorable than any of the other depressed groups, F = 10.1, and than all of the other subjects combined, F = 11 .O, p < .Ol, in both cases by two-tailed test. Feeling-Opinion Relationships Besides these condition differences in means, we can see another indication of the presumed thought-induced regulatory process in the correlations summarized in Table 3. These analyses also tested our prediction that the repressors’ depressed feelings would be more strongly related to the expression of negative judgments of the target person when they had little time to consider their views than when they could think about their ratings. By contrast, the sensitizers were not expected to show the negative mood-induced hostility to the target in either the Quick Response or Slower Response conditions since, theoretically, they would be more aware of their unpleasant feelings. As can be seen in the table, the correlations obtained with the liking measure are generally in accord with our expectations. In the Quick Response condition, when the subjects

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were required to express their assessments quickly and with little thought, the more depressed the repressors rated themselves after the mood induction, the less they said they liked the target person (r = - .43, p = .03). In the Slower Response condition, on the other hand, greater depression tended to be associated with greater expressed liking (r = + .19). This latter correlation was not reliable, but the difference between the two correlations was significant on this measure for the repressors (t = 2.10, p < .05, two-tailed test). None of the relationships achieved statistical significance in the case of the sensitizers but, generally speaking, for these women higher depression tended to be associated with somewhat greater expressed liking whether they had little or more time to make their judgments. This is the pattern we would expect if the sensitizers were indeed aware of their feelings. The second hostility measure, the subjects’ impressions of the target’s personality, did not give rise to any reliable relationships, perhaps because the women had by this time become more conscious of what they were saying. Nevertheless, this measure also points to a possible difference between the repressors and sensitizers in that, here too, the sensitizers seemed to be more inclined to “lean over backward” and not express negative judgments when they were feeling bad.’ DISCUSSION The present findings are congruent with Berkowitz’s (1983) analysis of depression-engendered hostility. The MAACL ratings show that the induction of even a relatively mild depressive mood tended to activate some angry feelings in the repressors and sensitizers alike. According to our model, these feelings accompany an aggressive inclination and hostile ideas. However, as the present formulation also maintains, the activated aggressive and hostile tendencies are not necessarily always revealed openly. Our findings suggest that control mechanisms set into operation by additional thought can regulate the extent to which the feeling-generated hostility is expressed overtly. The differences between the Quick Response and Slower Response conditions presumably grew out of differences in this controlled processing. Recall the ANOVA main effects for speed of response on both the liking and personality impression measures: Both the repressors and sensitizers tended to rate the target more favorably when they were urged to consider their judgments carefully-as if, in thinking about their responses, they realized it was to their benefit to restrain any unfriendly ratings. But the ’ We mention the present correlations even though they are statistically nonsignificant here because other, more recent findings obtained in our laboratory suggest that these relationshipsactually are fairly reliable. These later results will be reported in subsequent publications.

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repressors and sensitizers apparently did not regulate their feeling-influenced hostility to the same degree. Presumably because they tended to give more attention to their negative feelings so that the control processes were activated relatively strongly within them, the depressed sensitizers tended to “lean over backward” in restraining the impact of their unpleasant mood more than the repressors, particularly when they were asked to think about their judgments. If we accept the correlations reported in Table 3 as reliable, the greater the sensitizers’ depression, the more they tended to rate the target favorably.8 By contrast, the repressors were apparently less likely to exhibit this “leaning over backward” in their ratings of the target. Probably because they were generally less attentive to their negative feelings than were the sensitizers, they evidently did not engage in the same degree of selfregulation, especially when they had to make their judgments quickly. Thus, the greater their depression, the less was their expressed liking for the target when they had little time to consider their overt responses. But while the present findings are consistent with the theoretical model guiding our research, the results also raise some important questions. One has to do with just what produced the differences between the Quick Response and Slower Response conditions. We have assumed that the latter condition allowed the subjects to become aware of their unpleasant mood if they were inclined to attend to their negative feelings at all. The abovementioned differences between the sensitizers and repressors seem to support such an interpretation. However, it is also possible that the “take time” instructions simply permitted the participants to consider what might be the situational rules for desirable and/or appropriate conduct. Although the main effect for speed of response suggests that both the repressors and sensitizers could have thought that it was somewhat desirable to rate the target favorably in the present situation, the sensitizers might have been more attentive to the presumed social rules, and consequently, could have tried harder to regulate their expressed views in accord with these standards. This possibility is obviously plausible, but later research in our laboratory suggests that attention to one’s feelings can mediate the effects of these feelings on expressed judgments (Troccoli & Berkowitz, 1987). a We cannot help pointing out that the present results are inconsistent with the demand compliance thesis. Even though we were interested in seeing how unfriendly the subjects were to the target person, they were not as sophisticated as the demand compliance argument generally assumes, and typically expressed less-not more-unfriendliness the more they presumably thought about their judgments. Also note that although the sensitizers’ mood scores were evidently more affected by the mood induction treatment than were the repressors’ mood scores (see Table 1). which some readers might attribute to the formers’ supposed sensitivity to demand cues. our results with the hostility measures actually were better for the repressors than for the sensitizers. much as our theory predicts.

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Yet another question is whether the self-regulation we have posited has any relation to the processes discussed by self-awareness theory (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1981). We have suggested that the self-regulation that presumably occurred in this experiment was activated by the women’s attention to their feelings, while this other formulation holds that selfregulation arises from attention to the self. At first glance it would appear that our analysis is inconsistent with the findings obtained in self-awareness research. The present self-regulating subjects supposedly used external situational standards as a guide in determining what they said publicly about the target person, whereas in many self-awareness studies the selfregulating subjects evidently sought to adhere to their own personal standards (e.g., Gibbons, 1978). However, in actuality this inconsistency does not exist. Several experiments initiated by self-awareness theory have demonstrated that awareness-induced behavioral regulation can be steered by either external or internal standards, depending on what kinds of standards are most salient at the time and, presumably, what kinds of rewards are available (e.g., Scheier & Carver, 1980). Thus, the selffocus created, say, by the sight of one’s reflection in a mirror could conceivably activate much the same kind of controlled processing that was produced by feeling awareness in the Wisconsin studies. In our research and in the earlier self-awareness investigations the self-regulation may have been guided by whatever rules were prominent in the particular situation and whatever benefits seemed most desirable on that occasion. Further research obviously is necessary to determine whether this is indeed the case. REFERENCES Abraham, K. (l%O). Selected papers on psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books. Baron, R. (1977). Human aggression. New York: Plenum. Bell, P., & Byrne, D. (1978). Repression-sensitization. In H. London & J. Exner (Eds.), Dimensions of personality. New York: Wiley. Berkowitz, L. (1983). Aversively stimulated aggression: Some parallels and differences in research with animals and humans. American Psychologist, 38, 1135-I 144. Berkowitz, L., & Troccoli, B. (1986). An examination of the assumptions in the demand characteristics thesis: With special reference to the Velten mood induction procedure. Motivation and Emotion, 10, 339-351. Buss, A. (1961). The psychology of aggression. New York: Wiley. Busse, E. (1959). Psychopathology. In J. Burren (Ed.), Handbook ofaging and the individual. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Byrne, D. (1961). The repression-sensitization scale: Rationale, reliability, and validity. Journal

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