The roles of relationship quality and dampening of positive affect in depression

Abstract

Depression is well-known for having impact on the partner relationship (and vice versa), while dampening of positive affect has recently been discovered as a contributing factor to depression as well. The current study examined the association between depression, relationship quality and dampening of positive affect with the intention of gaining more insight into the possible ways in which these three variables could be connected in two participant samples – one clinical (N = 74) and one student (N = 66). Two mediation models were hypothesized. The known associations between depression and respectively relationship quality and dampening were confirmed. A significant new association between relationship quality and dampening was found in the student sample, although it was not found in the clinical sample. Dampening of positive affect was found to be a significant mediator of the association between relationship quality and depression in the student sample, but not in the clinical sample. Possible explanations for these findings, limitations and suggestions for future research and practice are given.