Sociotropic personality and information processing following imaginal priming: A test of the congruency hypothesis

Consistent with the cognitive theory of depression, research has documented that the match between sociotropy and negative interpersonal life events predicts dysphoria or depression better than either variable alone. However, there has been insufficient empirical attention to schema activation and cognitive processing in this personality mode. This study assessed the congruency hypothesis in sociotropy with respect to information processing. A sample of 127 female undergraduates (High Sociotropy, n = 66; Low Sociotropy, n = 61) listened to audiotaped presentations of rejection or failure episodes and completed a descriptiveness rating task and an "interpersonal" Stroop task. Our main prediction was that the congruent imaginal prime (i.e., rejection episode) would activate negative self-schemata in highly sociotropic individuals, and that this congruence would influence both self-referential endorsements and response latencies. Results indicated that highly sociotropic individuals endorsed more negative and less positive adjectives as self-descriptive following the rejection condition than individuals low on sociotropy. When self-relevant adjectives were employed in the analyses of reaction times, the results supported the information processing congruency hypothesis.