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How does our mental health shape our view of politics? A new study suggests that depression not only affects our emotional well-being but also might influence how we perceive our political world. Researchers from the University of Liverpool and Stanford University have discovered a complex web linking pandemic-related stress, depression, and political attitudes, shedding light on the ways in which our psychological state impacts our political perceptions and behaviors.
The motivation behind this study stems from an urgent need to understand the consequences of depression. With over 280 million people affected globally, understanding the broader implications of this condition is more crucial than ever. Previous research hinted at a connection between political attitudes and depression, but a comprehensive framework to explore this relationship was missing. This study aimed to fill that gap, proposing a cognitive model to examine how depression shapes political perceptions.
“Depression has always existed and is deemed to be one of the most common mental health difficulties,” said study author Luca Bernardi, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Liverpool.
“For decades, psychologists have been studying how depression changes how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. Despite politics being omnipresent in people’s everyday life, political perceptions have been by and large overlooked. Our task is to understand how depression may influence people’s perceptions of their own ability to engage in politics and how representative government is perceived.”
The researchers developed a cognitive model of depression and political attitudes in which they posited that life stressors can trigger depressive symptoms, which in turn shape political perceptions through specific cognitive processes. These processes include brooding, a form of negative repetitive thinking, and negativity biases in news selection, which refer to a tendency to prefer negative over positive news.
The model suggests a sequential relationship where stress leads to depression, depression exacerbates maladaptive cognitive strategies like brooding and negativity biases, and these cognitive processes then influence political attitudes. Political attitudes, in this context, are understood in terms of how individuals perceive their own efficacy in political matters (internal political efficacy), their trust and satisfaction with the government, and their overall attention to politics.
To test this cognitive model, the researchers conducted an online survey among a demographically and politically representative sample of 1,692 British adults in March 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This timing allowed the researchers to capture the impact of pandemic-related stressors on depression and political attitudes in a real-world context.
The survey measured various factors, including stress and worry related to the pandemic, depressive symptoms using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD-9), brooding rumination, and negativity biases in news selection. Political attitudes were assessed through questions related to political attention, internal and external political efficacy, satisfaction with the government’s handling of the pandemic, and trust in government.
The findings confirmed a significant association between COVID-19-related stressors—such as worry about personal and family health, financial concerns, and the effects of lockdown measures—and symptoms of depression. This crucial link establishes the foundational premise of the researchers’ model: that external stressors, especially those as unprecedented as the pandemic, can exacerbate or trigger depressive symptoms.
The researchers found that individuals with higher levels of depressive symptoms were more likely to engage in brooding and exhibit a negativity bias when selecting news stories. Brooding, in turn, was negatively associated with internal political efficacy, indicating that individuals who engage in this form of rumination feel less capable of understanding and participating effectively in politics.
Similarly, negativity biases in news selection were linked to lower political attention and diminished trust in and satisfaction with the government. This relationship suggests that the cognitive effects of depression can influence how individuals engage with external information. The preference for negative news could potentially overwhelm or discourage individuals, leading them to disengage from political content and, by extension, political participation.
Surprisingly, however, the study did not find a statistically significant direct link between brooding and political attention.
“Because rumination consumes cognitive resources and fixates attention on depressive symptoms, we were expecting that attention to politics would be reduced,” Bernardi told PsyPost. “Instead, what we found is that depressive symptoms may influence attention to politics through negativity biases in news selection. In this respect, depression may not necessarily make people less interested in politics, but it is possible that it leads to political avoidance.”
These associations suggest that the cognitive effects of depression can extend into the political domain, affecting how individuals perceive their role in the political process and their evaluations of political institutions. Interestingly, the researchers also identified direct associations between depression and certain political attitudes, independent of cognitive processes. In particular, depression was directly linked to reduced external political efficacy and trust in government.
“The take away of our study is that depression may influence political attitudes both directly and indirectly,” Bernardi explained. “On the one hand, due to its symptoms, depression may impinge upon feelings of representation and trust in government. On the other hand, the manner in which individuals experiencing depressive symptoms process information can tell us something about how they evaluate themselves and the political world.
“In particular, repetitive negative thinking (rumination) partly explains why depression may reduce one’s confidence to engage in politics; in turn, negativity biases in the way people attend to the news partly explains why depression may reduce one’s feelings of representation, trust in and satisfaction with government.”
However, the study’s insights come with a caveat. The researchers caution against drawing firm causal conclusions from their findings due to the observational nature of the study. They also note the reliance on self-reported measures of depression, which may not capture the full spectrum of depressive experiences or account for potential biases in self-reporting.
Looking ahead, future research could delve deeper into these relationships, potentially employing longitudinal or experimental designs to more confidently assert causality. “In the future, we aim to provide more evidence of causal relationships among the links explored in our model and to further study the role played by cognitive regulation processes in explaining the relation between depression and politics,” Bernardi said.
The study, “A cognitive model of depression and political attitudes,” was published in the journal Electoral Studies and was authored by Luca Bernardi, Giovanni Sala, and Ian H. Gotlib.
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