Corresponding author: Michael F. Steger, Colorado State University, Department of Psychology, 1876 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1876, ude.etatsoloc@regets.f.leahcim.
The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at J Couns PsycholDysfunctional social behavior has been implicated in the experience of depression. People with greater depressive symptoms report more frequent negative social interactions and react more strongly to them. It remains unknown, however, whether reaction strength differs depending on whether social interactions are positive or negative. Drawing on socio-evolutionary models of depression (N. B. Allen & P. B. T. Badcock, 2003), we proposed that people with greater depressive symptoms should not only react more strongly to negative social interactions but also to positive social interactions and a sense of belonging. Using non-clinical samples, two daily process studies examined the role of depression in people's reactivity to social interactions in natural, ongoing, social contexts. In Study 1, the number of positive and negative social events showed a stronger relation to well-being among people with greater depressive symptoms. Study 2 extended this finding to perceptions of belonging in memorable social interactions, finding a stronger link between belonging and well-being among people with greater depressive symptoms. Together these studies provide the first indication that depressive symptoms may sensitize people to everyday experiences of both social rejection and social acceptance.
Keywords: Depression, Social activity, Need to belong, Well-being, Daily life events, Reward responsiveness
A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind. (Cheever, 1991)
Humans have a profound need to connect with others and gain acceptance into social groups (i.e., belonging; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Deci & Ryan, 2000). People form bonds readily and organize much of their behavior around establishing and maintaining those bonds. Further, people suffer when relationships deteriorate and social bonds are severed. Although feeling disconnected from others and experiencing a lack of belonging bothers everyone, depressed people may be particularly sensitive to these painful social encounters (Allen & Badcock, 2003). Because of the importance of social experiences to people's well-being (e.g., Diener & Seligman, 2000), and to the etiology and maintenance of depression (e.g., Allen & Badcock, 2003; Barnett & Gotlib, 1988; Coyne, 1976b), it is vital to examine how depressed people's well-being is enhanced or eroded by positive and negative social interactions. The present research used two daily process studies to test the degree to which naturally occurring positive and negative social interactions interact with depressive symptoms to predict well-being.
The motivational and affective profile associated with depression can be expected to influence the ability to feel a sense of social belonging and how, in turn, these feelings influence well-being. It is rare for a social interaction to provide objective evidence of rejection or acceptance, leaving the ultimate impact of social interactions up to people's perceptions. When people experience positive social interactions they should be more likely to feel a sense of belonging. However, depressed people's social information-processing biases appear to make it less likely that they will perceive cues of acceptance and belonging in social interactions. For example, in laboratory studies, clinically depressed people show preferential attention to sad faces, adjectives, and emotion words (e.g., Gotlib, Kasch, et al., 2004; Gotlib, Krasnoperova, Yue, & Joormann, 2004; Mogg & Bradley, 2005). Further, depressed people typically view ambiguous social interactions as negative, attribute these negative outcomes to the self, and act in accord with expectations that negative social interactions are likely and costly (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979; Joiner & Coyne, 1999). It appears that depressed people should be more likely to pay attention to negative social interactions, and less likely to feel a sense of belonging.
Evidence does, indeed, suggest that depressed people often fail in their quest to satisfy their need for belonging in relationships (e.g., Hagerty, Williams, Coyne, & Early, 1996), with potentially severe consequences (Leary, 1990). Depressed people report fewer intimate relationships, and elicit fewer positive, caring responses and more negative, rejecting responses from others (Gotlib, 1992; Joiner & Coyne, 1999; Segrin & Abramson, 1994). Depressed people also appear to induce negative affect in others, which, in turn, elicits rejection and the loss of socially rewarding opportunities (Coyne, 1976a; Joiner & Katz, 1999).
A synthesis of the existing literature leads us to conclude that people with greater depressive symptoms are more likely to create difficult social situations, have worse interactions, and preferentially direct their attention to negative emotional social stimuli. As a result of this cascade of social dysfunction, it seems possible that more depressed people are sensitized to negative social interactions. A number of studies have examined sensitivity to rewards and punishments among clinically depressed samples. Generally, laboratory studies show that clinically depressed people experience dulled, not heightened, reactions to negative, punishment cues and positive, reward cues (e.g., winning/losing small to large amounts of money in mock gambling paradigms; Henriques & Davidson, 1990, 2000; Sloan, Strauss, & Wisner, 2001). This dulled reactivity has also been extended to social stimuli (e.g., sad and amusing films; Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross, & Gotlib, 2002). Researchers have concluded from such results that dulling of reactions to positive and negative stimuli is a hallmark of major depressive disorder (Henriques & Davidson, 1991; Rottenberg, 2005). Nonetheless, there are some indications that clinically depressed people show greater reactivity to positive reward cues (Must et al., 2006), particularly if they attribute the onset of positive events in everyday life to global and stable causes (Needles & Abramson, 1990).
However, social experience is best understood as a dynamic, communication-driven process with progressive reciprocal influences of actors, partners, and situational demands (e.g., Gable & Reis, 1999; Gilbert, 2006). Cross-sectional survey methods miss this dynamic interchange, asking research participants to retrospectively evaluate and generalize across varying experiences in different social contexts. Laboratory studies often employ singular, sometimes arbitrary, de-contextualized stimuli (e.g., words or pictures of facial expressions; Gotlib, Kasch, et al., 2004). For example, it is not clear that images of an angry person would hold the same implications for social acceptance and rejection as a real-world disagreement with a friend. Daily process studies are able to capture people's everyday social experiences, and their reactions to them, as they unfold in their typical environments. This method confers ecological validity that is often sacrificed with other approaches and can shed light on how people with depressive symptoms react to life events. For example, this type of research has shown that people with greater depressive symptoms reported less intimacy, enjoyment, and perceived influence in everyday social interactions (e.g., Nezlek, Hampton, & Shean, 2000; Nezlek, Imbrie, & Shean, 1994) and report less day-to-day stability in well-being (Gable & Nezlek, 1998). Of particular relevance to this study, researchers have found that depressed people were more reactive to positive life events, reacting to both positive and negative events with more strongly enhanced positive affect, among other indicators of well-being (Nezlek & Gable, 2001). Whereas prior laboratory studies indicated dampened reactivity to positive, reward cues among more depressed people (e.g., Sloan et al., 2001), when positive events occur outside of the laboratory, an opposite effect is found (see Needles & Abramson, 1990 for a 6-week prospective investigation). Providing additional weight to the notion that results from laboratory studies diverge from studies with stronger links to everyday functioning, a recent longitudinal epidemiological study showed that depressed people benefit more from becoming married compared to less depressed people (Frech & Williams, 2007).
There is another reason why Nezlek and Gable (2001) may have found greater reactivity to life events in contrast to laboratory studies. Lab-based studies have focused on people with clinical levels of depression, often carrying the diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, whereas Nezlek and Gable modeled depressive symptoms on a continuum. Clinical levels of depression may represent a significantly more debilitating condition (e.g., Allen & Badcock, 2003), leading clinically depressed people to feel numb and less reactive to negative social experiences as a self-protective strategy (e.g., Rottenberg, 2005). On the other hand, evidence is emerging that depressive symptoms lie on a continuum of increasing impairment (e.g., Backenstrass et al., 2006; Priciandaro, & Roberts, 2005; Ruscio & Ruscio, 2002). Subthreshold depression may be a pre-morbid manifestation of psychopathology, and, in fact, people with subthreshold depression are at substantial risk of developing major depressive disorder (e.g., Cuijpers, Smit, van Straten, 2007; Fogel, Eaton, & Ford, 2006; Regeer et al., 2006; Sherbourne et al., 1994) as well as other adverse outcomes such as suicidal behavior (Fergusson, Horwood, Ridder, & Beautrais, 2005). Understanding how social experiences influence the well-being of people with subthreshold depression may shed light on the progression to disorder. One study has examined the reactivity of clinically depressed people to life events in their naturalistic environments. This study split the difference, so to speak, converging with laboratory studies of clinically depressed people in finding dulled reactivity to negative life events, and converging with daily process studies of subthreshold samples in finding heightened reactivity to positive life events (Peeters, Nicolson, Berkhof, Delespaul, & DeVries, 2003).
The social risk hypothesis of depression (Allen & Badcock, 2003) provides one account of how subthreshold levels of depressive symptoms could have evolved to help people reduce the risk of being excluded from social groups. Ancestral humans faced survival challenges that were best met through participation with reliable others in social groups. Being accepted by a social group increased the likelihood of survival, whereas being rejected decreased the likelihood of survival as well as the ability to find suitable mates to produce offspring and continue one's genetic lineage. Allen and Badcock argued that people with subclinical levels of depressive symptoms should be highly reactive to cues indicative of threats to one's social resources. The central goal of behavior, then, is to ensure that the benefits that a person provides to a social group far outweigh any perceived burden; a positive value-to-burden ratio is synonymous with secure group status. As people perceive their social value falling and their subsequent risk of social exclusion rising, depressive symptoms direct attentional resources to ongoing social information. With this social attunement, behavior can be modified as needed to prevent social rejection or exclusion. Likewise, people's behavioral repertoire will be subdued to prevent further conflict and potentially catastrophic loss (e.g., rejection from the group or physical harm); such responses would be marked by submissiveness, and inhibition of exploratory and resource-seeking behaviors (Gilbert, 1992; 2006). These responses mimic depressive symptoms, and research has shown that people with greater depressive symptoms react to perceived dominance from others with exacerbated submissiveness and feelings of inferiority compared to people with lesser depressive symptoms (e.g., Zuroff, Fournier, & Moskowitz, 2007). Clinical levels of depression may represent a malfunctioning of the evolved mental apparatus that is proposed to monitor risk for social exclusion. Instead of being sensitive to possible rejection, clinical depression might reflect a lack of context sensitivity such that any situation that is not objectively positive is viewed as threatening. As a result, submissive, self-deprecating psychological and behavioral reactions are rigidly enacted (Allen, Gilbert, Semedar, 2004).
This model prioritizes social events over other types of life events, making Nezlek and Gable's (2001) study an imperfect test. A better test of this model is provided by a daily process study showing that people with greater depressive symptoms react more strongly (i.e., experience more distress) in response to social stressors than do people with lesser depressive symptoms (e.g., O'Neill, Cohen, Tolpin, & Gunthert, 2004). Thus, there is some evidence for the central proposition of the social risk hypothesis in the naturally occurring social experiences of people with subthrehold depressive symptoms.
Theories such as the social risk hypothesis are fairly explicit in predicting that people with greater depressive symptoms should react more strongly to threats of social exclusion, as would be indicated by negative social interactions or social stressors (Allen et al., 2004; Gilbert, 2006). This perspective is in line with the prevailing tradition in psychology to focus on negative expressions of human behavior and psychopathology rather than on the full spectrum of human behavior, including positive experiences and well-being (Seligman & Czikszentmihalyi, 2000). Therefore, as currently articulated, socio-evolutionary theories neither predict nor account for evidence of stronger reactions to positive events among people with subthreshold (Nezlek & Gable, 2001) and clinical depression (Peeters et al., 2003). We believe that these models can be extended to predict heightened reactions to positive social interactions among people with subthreshold depressive symptoms.
The social risk hypothesis frames social relationships in terms of social value and social burdens – if social burden exceeds, or even equals, one's social value, then one is at elevated risk of being excluded and attracting negative attention (e.g., Allen et al., 2004). Humans presumably evolved the ability to appraise how they are being viewed by others (e.g., if they are attracting negative attention from their group, Gilbert, 1997). According to this perspective, depressive symptoms evolved to facilitate appraisals of falling social value and rising social burden, and it is because of this function that they sensitize people to threats of social rejection. It seems equally likely that depressive symptoms help people identify when their social value is rising and their social burden is falling; positive social interactions signal rising social value, and therefore more secure belonging. Thus, people with greater depressive symptoms can be expected to capitalize on positive social interactions by experiencing enhanced well-being. From the perspective of a social group, depressed people are prone to unsatisfying, problematic relationships and are often avoided as interaction partners (e.g., Joiner & Katz, 1999). Happy people, in contrast, tend to possess good relationships, and people with higher positive affect are evaluated more favorably by interaction partners (e.g., Gable, Reis, Impett, & Asher, 2004; Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). Thus, it would be adaptive for people with greater depressive symptoms to be highly reactive to positive social interactions because their increased well-being would make them more attractive as social partners (decreasing the likelihood of future rejection and solidifying their social membership). In short, there is no particular reason from a socio-evolutionary standpoint to postulate that depressive symptoms might have evolved only to sensitize people to risks of disadvantageous social value/burden ratios. We argue that people with subthreshold depression may be uniquely attentive to both positive and negative social cues – and may be expected to be particularly reactive to their social experiences – because such cues provide valuable information about their degree of acceptance and security within their social group. In our model, mild to moderate depressive symptoms direct people's attention to seeking and establishing, not just protecting, belonging.
Social experiences are strongly implicated in the etiology and maintenance of depression. We propose that mild to moderate levels of depressive symptoms sensitize people to cues regarding their degree of social belonging, extending previous theories to include indicators of rising belonging. That is, when people with greater depressive symptoms perceive their belonging to be at risk, as indicated by negative social interactions, they should react more strongly with decreases in well-being. Similarly, when they perceive their belonging to be secure, as indicated by positive social interactions, they should react more strongly with increases in well-being. We are aware of no previous research that has examined the reactivity of people with mild to moderate depression symptoms to the full spectrum of positive and negative social interactions.
Inquiry into the ramifications of social experiences can advance by examining how people differing in depressive symptoms act and react in their natural, ongoing social environments. Therefore, we conducted two daily process studies. In Study 1, we examined how depressive symptoms influenced reactivity to an objective list of specific negative and positive social interactions. To better understand reactions to these social events, we assessed affective (positive and negative affect) and cognitive (appraisals of how meaningful and satisfying life is) markers of well-being. Because no finite list can hope to capture all of the significant interactions people might experience, in Study 2, we examined the role of depressive symptoms in response to appraisals of memorable social interactions. Thus, using both objective and subjective measures of interaction quality, we tested our proposal that depressive symptoms attune people to signals of social rejection as well as belonging. Drawing on previous theory and research, we hypothesized people with greater depressive symptoms would report (1) more frequent negative, and less frequent positive, social interactions, and (2) greater reactivity in terms of affective and cognitive markers of well-being to positive social interactions, negative social interactions, and perceptions of belonging.
Study 1 focused on relations between positive and negative social interactions and well-being among people with varying depressive symptoms. Previous lab-based research examined depressive symptoms in the context of positive and negative social stimuli, such as photos of facial expressions, in clinically depressed samples (e.g., Gotlib, Kasch, et al., 2004), and some daily process research examined links between subthreshold depressive symptoms and naturalistic daily life events (e.g., Nezlek & Gable, 2001). However, despite the strong role social functioning is thought to play in the etiology and exacerbation of depressive symptoms (e.g., Coyne, 1976a), research is lacking on the reactivity of people with mild to moderate depressive symptoms to both positive and negative social events. To understand how people with greater depressive symptoms react to positive and negative social interactions, we assessed relations between social interactions and a broad range of well-being measures. Specifically, we measured cognitive evaluations of life satisfaction and meaning in life as well as positive and negative affect. Thus, we assessed what we refer to as cognitive well-being (CWB) and affective well-being (AWB). We used a 21-day daily process method in which participants recorded the occurrence of a variety of social interactions and their well-being each day. This method generates hierarchically structured data in which daily life ratings are nested within individuals. Direct relations between well-being and social experiences reported in daily life were assessed. Additionally, cross-level interactions assessed the extent to which relations between day-to-day social interactions and well-being varied across levels of depression. Thus, we looked at how many positive and negative social interactions people with greater depressive symptoms reported. In addition, we examined whether people with greater depressive symptoms reacted to positive and negative social interactions more strongly in terms of AWB and CWB.
Participants were recruited from undergraduate psychology courses at a large Midwestern university (N = 106; M age = 19.7, SD = 3.1; 66% female; 74% European-American), and completed the depression measure and daily reports in exchange for course credit. Missing responses and invalid response patterns (i.e., no day-to-day variation in responses, same rating score given for all items) resulted in a final sample size of 104.
Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). Twenty items were rated from 0 (Rarely or None of the Time) to 3 (Most or All of the Time) (α = .86). 1 The mean symptom severity of this sample (M = 16.7, SD = 10.5) was roughly 0.5 SD lower than clinical sample means (Radloff, 1977), with 38.5% of the sample scoring above the mild to severe depression cutoff score (17) suggested for comparisons between normal and clinical populations (Radloff, 1977). Thus, this sample appears to have sufficient individuals reporting subthreshold symptoms to be considered at risk for significant distress and/or impairment.
Positive and negative social interactions were assessed using five positive (e.g., “Flirted with someone or arranged a date,” “Went out socializing with friends/date (e.g., party, dance clubs”) and five negative items (e.g., “A disagreement with a close friend or steady date was left unresolved,” “Was excluded or left out by my group of friends”) from the Daily Events Survey (Butler, Hokanson, & Flynn, 1994). Items were rated on whether they happened (1) or not (0). Principal axis factor analysis with Promax rotation revealed that items assorted into three factors. One factor (eigenvalue = 1.85) was comprised of three positive social items concerning friends and flirting; the second factor (eigenvalue = 1.55) was comprised of all five negative social interaction items; the third factor (eigenvalue = 1.05) was comprised of the two items concerning interactions with steady romantic partners. Because the negative social interactions formed a clear factor and the two small positive factors were highly related (factor correlation = .55), the items were assorted into one negative social interaction scale and one positive social interaction scale. Reliability estimates were obtained from Hierarchical Linear Modeling 6.0 (HLM; Raudenbush, Bryk, Cheong, & Congdon, 2004), supporting the consistency of the two scales (reliability = .93 and .91, for positive and negative social interactions, respectively).
Cognitive well-being was assessed by summing three items used in previous research (Steger, Kashdan, & Oishi, 2008) assessing meaning in life (i.e., “How meaningful does your life feel?” “How much do you feel your life had purpose today?”) and life satisfaction (“How satisfied are you with your life?”) rated from 1 (Not at All) to 7 (Absolutely). Meaning and life satisfaction items were highly interrelated (γ = 1.14, SE = .03, t (96) = 35.20, p < .000)1(reliability = .98).
Affective well-being was assessed by subtracting average daily negative affect ratings (i.e., sluggish, afraid, sad, anxious, and angry) from average daily positive affect ratings (i.e., relaxed, proud, excited, appreciative, enthusiastic, happy, satisfied, curious, and grateful) (see Schimmack & Diener, 1997). Affective items were rated from 1 (Very Little/Not at All) to 5 (Extremely). These emotional adjectives are used frequently in experience-sampling studies of emotion (e.g., Kashdan & Steger, 2006). PA and NA subscale scores were highly interrelated (γ = −.11, SE = .00, t (102) = 25.062 p < .0001) (reliability = .93).
During an initial orientation session, participants answered demographic questions, and received a packet of 21 duplicate daily reports containing the daily measures specified above, along with instructions to complete a single form at the end of each day or within one hour after waking. Participants were told in class during recruitment and in subsequent emails that it was extremely important to only complete reports at the end of each day, and not to complete more than one report on any single day. After 3 weeks, participants turned in their daily reports. All participants completed the CES-D three weeks into the study, on the day when they turned in their daily reports. Participants received course credit for their completed daily reports and survey responses.
The data consisted of 2,118 daily reports nested within 104 people. Participants reported mean daily CWB of 14.3 (SD = 3.9), which is above the midpoint of 12, and mean daily AWB of 0.8 (SD = 1.3). This positive number means that participants reported more positive emotions than negative emotions per day. Participants reported more positive social interactions (M = 1.11, SD = 1.19) than negative social interactions (M = 0.33, SD = 0.69). Using recommended formulas for calculating intraclass correlations within multilevel datasets, we calculated the proportion of variance in daily scores due to between-person factors (individual differences) compared to within-person factors (days) (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002, p. 36, 71). In each case, the percentage refers to the proportion of variance attributable to between-person factors ( Table 1 ). From these proportions, we can see that only about one-third to two-fifths of the variance in daily positive and negative social interactions, and AWB, are due to stable, dispositional factors, with the majority of the variance attributable to fluctuating daily factors. The reverse case was true for CWB, which appears more stable overall.
Descriptive statistics for Studies 1 and 2.
| M | SD | rij | u0j | ICC | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Study 1 | ||||||
| IVs | Cognitive Well-Being | 14.27 | 3.92 | 5.20 | 10.31 | .66 |
| Affective Well-Being | .81 | 1.34 | 1.08 | .72 | .40 | |
| DVs | Positive Social Interactions | 1.11 | 1.19 | .90 | .52 | .37 |
| Negative Social Interactions | .33 | .69 | .31 | .16 | .34 | |
| Study 2 | ||||||
| IVs | Cognitive Well-Being | 14.83 | 2.85 | 3.12 | 4.90 | .61 |
| Affective-Well-Being | .93 | 1.21 | .77 | .69 | .47 | |
| DVs | Belonging | 15.90 | 3.35 | 6.50 | 4.71 | .42 |
Notes. The following terms were derived from “empty” models, as described in Equations 1 and 2 (except with the depression term excluded from Equation 2), rij = within-persons variance; u0j = between-persons variance; ICC = proportion of variance in each variable attributable to stable individual differences. Separate models were conducted for each variable.
Coefficients representing daily social interactions and well-being were estimated for each person (Level-1) and individual differences in these variables accounted for by depressive symptoms were estimated (Level-2). Level-1 variables were person-centered and Level-2 depression ratings were standardized and entered uncentered. First, we first tested whether more depressed people reported fewer positive and more negative social interactions than less depressed people using open HLM equations with CES-D scores as a Level 2 covariate of the intercept of positive and negative social interactions.
Yij = β0j + rij (Level 1) β0j = γ00 + γ01[depression] + u0j (Level 2)where Yij is either positive or negative social interactions reports for person j on day i, β0j is a random coefficient representing the intercept, or average daily number of interactions for person j, and rij represents error. At Level 2, β0j is predicted by γ00, which is the average of Level 1 coefficients describing daily reports of interactions, γ01, which is each participants' standardized CES-D scores score, and u0j, which is error.
People with more depressive symptoms reported marginally fewer positive social interactions (γ = −.02, SE = .01, t (102) = 1.79, p < .10), and significantly more negative social interactions (γ = .03, SE = .01, t (102) = 4.23, p < .0001).
We next tested whether people with greater depressive symptoms were more reactive to positive and negative social interactions using an equation in which well-being was predicted by an intercept and number of positive and negative social interactions, with CES-D scores as a Level 2 covariate of each term.
Yij = β0j + β1j [positive social interactions] + β2j [negative social interactions] + rij (Level 1) β0j = γ00 + γ01 [depression] + u0j (Level 2) β1j = γ10 + γ11 [depression] + u1j (Level 2) β2j = γ20 + γ21 [depression] + u2j (Level 2)where Yij is either CWB or AWB scores for person j on day i, β0j is a random coefficient representing the intercept, or average daily number of interactions for person j, β1j represents each participants' daily positive social interactions, β2j represents each participants' daily negative social interactions, and rij represents error. At Level 2, β0j is predicted by γ01, which is the average of Level 1 coefficients describing the relations between both positive and negative social interactions and the corresponding Yij (either CWB or AWB), γ00, which is each participant's standardized CES-D score, and u0j, which is error. Thus, γ01 reflects the influence of participants' depressive symptoms on their average daily CWB or AWB. β1j is predicted from γ10, which reflects the Level 1 coefficients describing the average relation between positive social interactions and CWB or AWB, γ11, which represents the influence of depressive symptoms on daily CWB and AWB, and u1j, which is error. β2j is modeled identically, but using reports of negative social interactions rather than positive social interactions. Thus, we modeled daily CWB and AWB as a function of within-person reactivity (slopes) to positive and negative social interactions, γ10 and γ20, allowing these relations to differ for different participants, and using depression scores to predict these individual differences in reactivity, γ11 and γ21.
Across participants, positive, γ10, and negative, γ20, social interactions were significantly related to well-being ( Table 1 ). People with greater depressive symptoms reported lower average daily CWB and AWB, γ01. Depression also moderated relations between daily positive, γ11, and negative, γ21, social interactions and daily CWB, and between daily positive social interactions, γ21, and daily AWB. To decompose the interaction between depression and social interactions we calculated means at +1 SD and −1 SD. Compared to people with lesser depressive symptoms, people with greater depressive symptoms reported larger positive relations between daily positive social interactions and CWB (see Figure 1 ) and AWB, and larger negative relations between daily negative social interactions and CWB. 2 Positive and negative social interactions, along with the moderating effect of depressive symptoms accounted for 27% of the variance in daily cognitive well-being and 42% of the variance in daily affective well-being (see Table 2 ).
Depressive symptom severity moderates relations between positive social interactions; and daily cognitive well-being (Study 1)
