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An Investigation of Self-Evaluation during the Initial Phase of Motivated Behavior in Individuals with Depression
Grehl, Mora
Grehl, Mora
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2025-08
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Psychology
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https://doi.org/10.34944/7svh-cy62
Abstract
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is associated with well-documented disruptions in both self-referential cognition and motivation. Yet little research has examined how these processes interact during the early, deliberative phases of goal pursuit. This project draws from clinical psychology, social-cognitive theory, motivation neuroscience, and computational psychiatry to examine how depressive symptoms shape the pre-decisional “choice valuation” phase of motivated behavior. A novel measure of self-evaluation was developed to assess the extent to which self-evaluation (i.e. thoughts about personal performance, others’ perceptions, and internalized expectations) get in the way of an individual's ability to act. Grounded in theories of self-regulation and motivational framing, this study hypothesized that depressive symptoms would amplify such self-evaluative interference in motivationally incongruent contexts and alter downstream judgments of effort and choice. Across two independent online samples (N = 90; N = 114), participants completed a validated task battery involving self-evaluation ratings, effort-for-self versus -other ratings, and binary decisions between activity pairs. Activities varied systematically in motivational orientation (autonomous vs. controlled; intrinsic vs. extrinsic) and self-evaluative interference, based on normative pretesting. Mixed-effects models revealed that depressive symptoms predicted greater self-evaluative interference, particularly in response to controlled or extrinsically motivated activities. Depressive symptoms also moderated effort appraisals—lowering perceived effort for the self in low self-evaluation contexts—and predicted decreased selection of activities rated as being driven for controlled reasons, extrinsically motivated, or more self-evaluative. All key interactions replicated across both samples.
These findings identify the choice valuation phase as a critical point of vulnerability in depression, where self-referential processing and motivational context jointly shape decision-making. By integrating theories and methods from diverse literatures, this work offers a novel framework for understanding how depressive symptoms impair goal engagement before behavior begins and suggests new targets for intervention at the intersection of self-concept, motivation, and action selection.
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