Spontaneous and induced counterfactual thinking in undergraduate students with depressive symptoms / 第三军医大学学报

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the properties of the abilities of spontaneous counterfactual thinking(SCFT) and induced counterfactual thinking(ICFT) produced by undergraduate students with depressive symptoms.Methods Undergraduates were induced to produce SCFT after recalling a negative event and ICFT after reading a story about a traffic event.Then the undergraduates were demanded to complete the counterfactual inference test(CIT).The amount and rationality of CFT and the scores of CIT were analyzed.Results Mild depressive students(MDS) generated a higher amount of SCFT than non-depressive students(NDS),midrange depressive students and severe depressive students(SVDS)(P0.05).The rationality of SCFT generated by four groups were significantly different(P