Biased belief updating in depression – bridging experimental work and clinical translational science

• Applicant: Dr. Tobias Kube
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538481730

Cognitive models of depression suggest that depression is characterised by negative beliefs and negatively biased information processing. Recent research has shown that negative beliefs often persist in individuals with major depression even when they experience new positive events. Despite significant advances in this research area, there are still several open questions and unresolved limitations. One of the limitations pertains to the specificity of the observed deficits in updating negative beliefs by positive information, as there have been no studies comparing individuals with major depression to an appropriate clinical control group. Furthermore, the existing research is largely limited to a few experimental designs and the use of self-report outcome measures. Therefore, the goal of the proposed research programme is to investigate biased belief updating in individuals with major depression, clinical control participants, and healthy control participants, using a variety of experimental procedures and eye tracking in addition to behavioural measures and self-reported outcome variables. Another open research question concerns the causality of biased belief updating in depression. Accordingly, another goal is to examine whether the reduced update of negative beliefs in response to novel positive information is a causal risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms. To achieve this, belief updating will be experimentally manipulated, and its effects on the development of depressive symptoms will be examined longitudinally. Lastly, an important aim of the proposed research programme is to investigate the clinical significance of this experimental basic research and to prepare clinical applications in psychotherapeutic interventions. To do this, a large longitudinal project will be conducted to investigate to what extent deficits in the integration of new positive experiences predict a poor symptom improvement in the acute phase of cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy for depression, where interventions often focus on experiential learning. Additionally, the insights gained from experimental psychopathology research will be applied in the implementation of behavioural experiments as an intervention for experiential learning. By combining experimental and clinical work, using a variety of methodological approaches, the planned studies are unique and innovative. The planned studies will not only enable an empirical test and refinement of theoretical models of depression, but will also inform the further development of treatment approaches. As a result, the proposed research programme has the potential to move forward research on biased belief updating in depression substantially. Moreover, it can offer valuable implications for other related research areas.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups