The Effects of Anxiety and Depression on Self-Defining Memory and Self-Defining Future Projections

Previous research suggests that depression has a clouding effect, preventing individuals from properly encoding and retrieving memories, resulting in a suspected inability to recall specific events and information (Conway, 1990). However, limited research had examined whether this phenomenon also exists within those with higher levels of anxiety. Depression and anxiety are often comorbid disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and share similar symptomology such as sleep disturbances, appetite disturbances, and oversensitivity to criticism (Liebowitz, 1993; Zajecka & Ross, 1995). This current study proposes that both anxiety and depression reduce an individual’s ability to recall specific events and information, as defined by Singer and Blagov (2000), when prompted to provide a self-defining memory. Fifty-one participants were asked to recall two self-defining memories and forty-six participants described where they saw themselves two years from that exact moment in order to determine whether depression and anxiety affect future projections as well as memory recall. It was hypothesized that individuals who score higher on depression and anxiety inventories would respond to the self-defining memory task with generic or episodic memories more often than they would with a specific response. It was also hypothesized that these individuals would write about their future using more negatively valenced words than would individuals who scored lower on these inventories. These expected findings would suggest that tasks designed to prompt memory recall or future projections could help identify individuals at risk or currently experiencing depression and or anxiety, allowing for early intervention in these disorders. Furthermore, a refined self-defining memory and self-defining future projections task designed for the classroom can be useful for identifying teens and children at risk for depression through a low stress task with a strong correlation to depression and anxiety markers in a nonclinical population.