Depression, social comparison, and the false-consensus effect.

Abstract

In general, people perceive high consensus for their own attributes (i.e., the false-consensus effect). Depressed and nondepressed college students were asked about the extent to which depression-relevant and depression-irrelevant attributes were true of themselves and true of the "average college student." Subjects were also asked questions assessing the accuracy of their perceptions of others. Depressed subjects showed less false consensus than nondepressed subjects. Although depressives characterized themselves as dissimilar to others, they showed no consistent bias to depreciate themselves relative to others. Nondepressives, on the other hand, consistently enhanced themselves relative to others, although the magnitude of their self-other differences was smaller than that of depressives. Interestingly, the tendency to depreciate themselves relative to others on negative depression-relevant items was a better predictor of severity of depression than self-perceptions or other perceptions alone. Findings regarding the accuracy of perceptions of others were mixed. The study is discussed in terms of its implications for the false-consensus effect, depressive attributional style, nondepressive self-serving biases, and therapy for depression.