The Effect Of Hostile Attribution Bias On Depression In Middle School Students: The Mediating Effect Of The Perceived Social Support

In order to investigate the effect of hostile attribution bias on depression and to understand the role of social support in between,this study used a combination of horizontal research,longitudinal tracking and experimental methods to investigate junior high school students in China.This study mainly includes three parts.Firstly,the study uses the Social Information Processing Attribution Bias Questionnaire(Chinese edition),the Perceived Social Support Scale(PSSS)and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to investigate the static relationship among hostile attribution bias,perceived social support and depression in junior high school students,that is,whether the mediating role of perceived social support between hostile attribution bias and depression is established.Study 1 adopted the method of convenience sampling.Junior high school students were selected as research objects in4 middle schools in Guizhou Province.A total of 1938 questionnaires were collected in this survey,among which 1878 valid questionnaires were collected.Secondly,Study 2 followed the freshmen for four months by using the same scale as Study 1 in the way of longitudinal tracking.This study is,from a longitudinal perspective,to verify whether the mediating relationship among perceived social support,hostile attribution bias and depression still holds and to examine whether there was a covariant relationship between perceived social support and depression in the semester transition stage.Study 2 used cluster sampling to select junior high students as research objects in four middle schools in Guizhou Province.It conducted four evaluations of the junior high freshmen during a four-month period.The first assessment was carried out one week after the new students enrolled,and 1133 valid questionnaires were collected.The following three assessments were carried out once every one month,and 1133,1129 and 1131 valid questionnaires were collected respectively.Finally,Study 3 investigated the changes of the perceived social support and depression by manipulating the hostile attribution bias of junior high school students,with the state anger scale,the hostile attribution bias scale,the state depression scale,the money allocation game,the perceived social support and other scales and experimental procedures.60 junior high school students were recruited to participate in this experiment.By analyzing the data from Study 1,Study 2 and Study 3,it was found that:Study 1:(1)Hostility attribution bias in junior high school students was significantly positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated with the perceived social support,and the perceived social support was significantly negatively correlated with depression in junior high school students.(2)There were significant gender differences in hostile attribution bias,depression and the perceived social support among junior high school students.Specifically,girls scored significantly higher than boys in hostile attribution bias and depression,while girls scored significantly lower than boys in the perceived social support.(3)After the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap(repeated sampling5000 times)mediation effect test,it is found that the perceived social support plays a partial mediating role between hostility attribution bias and depression in junior high school students.Study 2:(1)The perceived social support of junior high school freshmen showed a linear downward trend,and there were significant interindividual differences in the level of the perceived social support and the change rate of freshmen later when they first entered the school.(2)From the influence of hostile attribution bias on the change trend of the perceived social support,the study found that the former significantly negatively predicted the initial level of the latter,and also negatively predicted the change rate of the perceived social support in the later stage.(3)The depression of the junior high school freshmen showed a linear downward trend.There were significant differences between the initial level of depression and the change rate in the later stage of freshmen at the beginning of the enrolling.(4)In the influence of hostile attribution bias on the change trend of depression,hostile attribution bias is biased to positively predict the initial level of depression,but it cannot validly predict the change rate of depression in the later stage;(5)The intercept of the perceived social support significantly negatively predicts the intercept of depression and positively predicts the slope of depression.Meanwhile,the slope of the perceived social support significantly negatively predicts the slope of depression.(6)The intercept of the perceived social support plays a partial mediating role between the hostile attribution bias and the depression intercept,the intercept of the perceived social support plays a complete mediating role between the hostile attribution bias and the depression slope,and the slope of the perceived social support also plays a complete mediating role between the hostile attribution bias and the depression slope.Study 3:(1)In the perceived social support,there was no significant difference between the hostile attribution bias guided group and the controlled group,no matter in the negative/positive nature or in the negative/positive social support dimensions.(2)After the manipulation of hostile attribution bias,there were significant differences between the main effect of time and the interaction effect between group and time in the guided group and controlled group.(3)Compared with the difference between state depression in the hostile attribution bias guided group and the controlled group,it was found that the difference in state depression in the hostile attribution bias guided group was significantly smaller than the difference in the controlled group.The results show that the higher the hostile attribution bias is,the lower the perceived social support is,and as a result,the higher the depression level of junior high school students is.This is not only conducive to deepening the understanding of the relationship between hostile attribution bias,the perceived social support and depression,but also can change students’ perception of hostile attribution bias and improve the perception of social support,thereby reducing their depression level and promoting students’ healthy growth.