(PS3-5) Associations Between Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Video-elicited Emotions

Depression is characterized by disrupted emotional processing, including blunted emotional reactivity to positive cues of emotion and a bias toward negative emotions (Gruskin et al., 2020). However, the majority of prior research examining emotional experiences associated with depression has relied on retrospective self-report of general emotional experiences, rather than experimentally eliciting a range of specific emotional reactions. Moreover, research is lacking on depression and emotion-evocation among racially diverse samples, which is critical in the context of the disproportionate burden of depressive symptoms among Black and Hispanic individuals (Bailey et al., 2019; Williams et al., 2007). Finally, research is needed among parents of young children, since early childhood can present particular parenting challenges and depression is linked to more disruption in caregiving. The current study addressed these gaps in the literature by examining associations among depressive symptoms and evoked emotions among a racially diverse cohort of mothers.

The sample consisted of 206 mothers from an ongoing study of parent-child dyads recruited from the metropolitan areas of Boston and Philadelphia. Participants reported their current depressive symptoms using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PH2). Evoked emotion was evaluated using a task that presented neutral and emotional movie clips, each lasting 2 minutes, after which participants rated the extent to which they experienced a variety of emotions. The video clips were selected on the basis of prior literature to evoke fear (The Babadook), happiness (Mamma Mia!), sadness (The Champ), and anger (My Bodyguard).

Overall, non-White participants reported more symptoms of depression than White participants. Preliminary analysis, which will be completed by the conference, also suggested that emotion clips were successful in eliciting the target emotions. However, non-White participants reported the videos to be less emotionally evocative for fear and happiness, but more evocative for anger. In contrast to hypotheses, depressive symptoms did not relate to evoked emotions.

Preliminary results provide new insight into the limitations of traditional experimental manipulations of emotion, with some evidence for variation in evoked emotion as a function of participant race and ethnicity. Ongoing research on emotion in depression must take race and ethnicity into account in study design and participant recruitment to ensure that results are generalizable and useful for informing clinical interventions.