Great expectations? The relationship of goal setting, depressive symptoms, and affect intensity

A correlational study was conducted to investigate the nature of personal standards in 101 students with a range of depressive symptoms and affect intensity. Three types of goals were measured: Personal standards as measured by a perfectionism scale, standards related to interpersonal interactions in various social settings, and standards of performance on a creative empathy task. When questionnaires were used to assess subjects' personal standards (e.g., the Personal Standards Subscale and the ICQ), there were no differences between the goals of subjects with higher or lower depressive symptoms. However, when an achievement task was used, one of the goal measures (minimal standards on the task) was predicted by the interaction of affect intensity and depressive symptoms: Subjects who were below the mean on both affect intensity and depressive symptoms set the lowest minimal standards.