Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Impairment Or Underestimation? Negative Illusory Bias In Depressive Symptoms And Theory Of Mind, Jaclyn Boyer

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the social-cognitive skill of attributing beliefs, feelings, and intentions to others in order to predict their future behavior. Past research on ToM and depression is quite ambiguous; some studies have found significant impairment of ToM performance in depressed individuals, while others have found that depressed individuals perform better than those without depression. The purpose of the study was to clarify this ambiguity by considering the phenomenon of negative illusory bias (NIB) as a potential mediating variable. NIB refers to the tendency of competent individuals to underestimate their abilities. Therefore, along with measures of ToM and …