Negative expectations regarding interpersonal interactions in daily life are associated with subclinical depressive symptoms in a student sample: A prospective experience sampling study

Background. Dysfunctional expectations and interpersonal problems are central aspects of depression, but expectations regarding everyday-life interpersonal interactions have not been studied, yet. Using Experience Sampling, we measured expected emotions towards interaction partners and compared them with actual emotions. We hypothesized that stable negative expectations would predict sub-clinical depression and negative affect.Methods. Fifty-three students completed six days of Experience Sampling, consisting of one morning assessment on expectations regarding anticipated interpersonal interactions (9am), three assessments on actual interpersonal experiences (1pm, 5pm, 9pm), and six pseudo-random affect assessments. We compared expected emotions, experienced emotions, and day-to-day fluctuations of expectations between individuals with high versus low sub-clinical depression (median split). Using mixed models, we examined whether negative expectations preceded negative affect, and whether expectation violations preceded adjustments of expectations. Results. Individuals with higher depression expected more negative emotions, even after controlling for negative experiences, and surprisingly more variable expectations. In mixed models, neither momentary expectations nor experiences preceded negative affect, but worse-than-expected interpersonal interactions did. Better-than-expected interactions predicted reductions of negative expectations, but less so in the high-depression group. Conclusions. Our findings are limited by the non-clinical sample and skewed data. Nonetheless, our approach appears well-suited to examine idiosyncratic interpersonal expectations in vivo.