Current Investigation
depression
The goals of the current two-study investigation were to (1) develop persuasive psychoeducational materials that match dominant cultural beliefs about the causes of depression and (2) examine the effectiveness of tailored CBT descriptions matching baseline perceptions of the causes of depression in improving perceptions of CBT’s acceptability and credibility among a sample of adults from the general population. We sought to recruit a general community sample as social factors relating to mental health and help-seeking within the broader culture (e.g., attitudes in one’s social networks) are crucial in fostering positive attitudes towards treatment and encouraging the uptake of treatment [In Study 1, we randomised participants to receive either a generic description of CBT for depression or a description of CBT matched to biological/chemical, stress/environmental, or relationship/interpersonal causal models of depression. Participants who received the latter descriptions read either a simple version of the respective description or a complex version. The selection of description themes was guided by Watson and Beshai’s [In Study 2, we asked participants to select from a list of options which they believed to be the most likely cause of depression. We then randomly assigned half of the sample to read a tailored description of CBT that matched their selected causal mechanism, while the other half was assigned a generic description of CBT to read. We then assessed participant perceptions of CBT’s acceptability, credibility, and expectancy as a treatment for depression. Corresponding to the literature cited above, our hypotheses were as follows: Participants receiving either one of two biology-focused descriptions will report a significantly greater believability of CBT’s ability to disrupt biological mechanisms in depression compared to those in the control condition (Study 1).Participants receiving either one of two stress-focused descriptions of CBT will report a significantly greater believability of CBT’s ability to disrupt stress mechanisms in depression compared to those in the control condition (Study 1).Participants receiving either one of two interpersonally focused descriptions of CBT will report a significantly greater believability of CBT’s ability to disrupt relationship-based mechanisms in depression compared to those in the control condition (Study 1).Participants receiving complex descriptions will rate the matching explanatory models as significantly more believable than those receiving simple descriptions (Study 1).Participants in the tailored condition will rate CBT’s acceptability, credibility, and expectancy significantly more favourably than participants in the generic condition (Study 2).Finally, we explored the relationships between demographic factors and mechanistic believability (Study 1), as well as the relationships between demographics and perceptions of acceptability, credibility, and expectancy (Study 2). 