Contingencies of Self-Worth on Positive and Negative Events and Their Relationships to Depression

Cheng-Hong Liu; Po-Sheng Huang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02372

Contingencies of Self-Worth on Positive and Negative Events and Their Relationships to Depression

Front Psychol. 2018 Dec 3:9:2372. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02372. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Cheng-Hong Liu¹, Po-Sheng Huang²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
² Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan.

Abstract

Previous studies have found that the relationship between contingencies of self-worth (CSW) and depression was generally weak. We posited that this is partly because previous studies assumed CSW on positive and negative events as the same construct (one-dimensional CSW), which should be better conceptualized as two distinctive dimensions (two-dimensional CSW) in explaining depression. A total of 393 undergraduates from Taiwan completed the measures regarding one-dimensional CSW, two-dimensional CSW, and depression. After dividing CSW of seven classic domains into two dimensions of positive and negative CSW, the results of confirmatory factor analyses showed that the two-dimensional CSW model had better model fit than the one-dimensional model in all domains. Furthermore, relative to using one-dimensional CSW as a predictor of depression, the variance accounted for largely increased when positive and negative CSW entered simultaneously in the regression equation. The results suggest that CSW on positive and negative events should be seen as two dimensions and this perspective may largely increase the explanatory power of CSW in explaining mental health.

Keywords: contingencies of self-worth; contingent self-esteem; depression; negative contingencies of self-worth; positive contingencies of self-worth.