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 make me/not me judgements of trait adjectives were used to measure the self-schemas of college students. When stress levels were high, the postivity 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 reduced 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.