Future-event schemas: Automaticity and rumination in major depression

We examined the proposition that individuals with major depression make pre dictions about future events relatively automatically and pessimistically, reflecting use of ct future-event schema, white they also ruminate about th e future. Depressed participants and nondepressed controls indicated whethe r or not various positive and negative future events would happen to them o r to an average other-either under a concurrent attentional load or no such load-while their response latencies were assessed As hypothesized, depress ives showed relatively greater automaticity in their predictions than did n ondepressives, and a lack of optimism as well. More specifically, depressiv es showed a smaller increase in response latency due to the introduction of the attentional load than did nondepressives, suggesting relatively greate r processing efficiency, and they also predicted reliably fewer positive ev ents. Indeed, depressives also reported ruminating more about the future ba sed on a recent distressing life event. Overall, the results extend researc h on future-event schemas and automaticity (Andersen, Spielman, & Bargh, 19 92) from moderate to major depression and establish a link with future-even t rumination.