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Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Andreas Wilke of Clarkson University reveals the unexpected benefits depression brings to the decision making process.
Andreas Wilke is an assistant professor of psychology at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. His research focuses on human cognitive evolution, and more specifically, the evolution of human judgment and decision-making capacities. He holds a Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin.
Dr. Andreas Wilke - The Positive Side of Depression
Sadness, apathy, preoccupation. These traits come to mind when people think about depression, the world's most frequently diagnosed mental disorder. Yet, research that my colleagues and I recently published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology provides evidence that depression actually has an unexpected positive side effect as well. In a study I co-authored, my colleagues and I found that depressed individuals perform better than their non-depressed peers in sequential decision tasks.
Participants who were either healthy, clinically depressed or recovering from depression played a computer game in which they could earn money by hiring an applicant in a simulated job search. The game assigned each applicant a monetary value and presented applicants one-at-a-time in random order. Experiment participants faced the challenge of determining when to halt search and select the current applicant.
This is a problem that translates not only to job searches and hiring, but also to house-hunting and dating: When do you stop searching, and make the best choice based on what you have seen so far? The task has a known optimal strategy. As it turned out, depressed patients approximated this optimal strategy more closely than non-depressed participants. So while others searched through relatively few candidates before selecting an applicant, depressed participants searched more thoroughly and made choices that resulted in higher payoffs.
For decades, psychologists have debated whether depression has positive side effects for instance possibly promoting analytical reasoning and persistence. This discovery provides the first evidence that clinical depression may carry some benefits.
Ultimately, the findings will also contribute to another kind of search. Fully understanding the consequences of depression may help uncover the mental disorder's evolutionary roots, and thus open avenues for treatment.