Cognitive-Interpersonal Patterns in Dysphoria: The Impact of Sociotropy and Autonomy

Dysphoric and nondysphoric women who hadpredominantly sociotropic or predominantly autonomouspersonality features were compared on their responses toa standardized interpersonal task in which a confederate acted as a "helper" to plan lifechanges. As predicted, sociotropic subjects, whetherdysphoric or not, were more concerned aboutinterpersonal relatedness in the task, whereasautonomous subjects were more concerned about self-definition.Sociotropic subjects also perceived their partners morepositively and liked them more than did autonomoussubjects. Dysphoric autonomous subjects were liked less well than were dysphoric sociotropic subjectsor either nondysphoric group. These results reinforcetheoretical speculations that two distinctcognitive-interpersonal patterns underlie the behaviorof dysphoric individuals and indicate that both personalityfeatures and dysphoria influence interpersonalrejection.