Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this research is to investigate two different perspectives on depressive thinking. One viewpoint considers depression as a reflection of increasing general accessibility of negative constructs and depressive memories the other defines depressive thoughts as a reflection of changes at a more general level of cognitive representation.

Method: 54 subjects selected by convenient sampling method took part in the study. They were assigned to the following three groups: 18 patients suffering from major depression, 18 patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and finally 18 normal subjects compo-sing the control group (10 female and 8 male in each group). To investigate contrasting predi-cations from the two perspectives, depressed patients, obsessive patients, and normal control groups responded to Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS), perfectionism, DAS-need for approval, and Sentence Completion Task.

Findings: The result of one-way analysis of variance showed a significant difference between depressed, obsessive, and normal groups on Sentence Completion Task and DAS-need for approval test.Furthermore, the follow up Tukey test indicated a significant difference between depressed and the normal groups there was not a significant difference between depressed and obsessive groups.

Results: The results supported schematic mental prediction. Since schematic model was established for perfec-tionism and need for approval in obsessive patients, its exclusive explanation for depressed patients may not be confirmed.