Adolescents' perceptions of peer acceptance: Is dysphoria associated with greater realism?

This study assessed bias of adolescents' perceptions of their peer acceptance in order to test the depressive realism hypothesis. High school students (n = 289; 50.5% male: 21.5% minority) completed a depression inventory and predicted acceptance ratings they expected to receive from peers. The difference between mean expected and received peer acceptance ratings was used to measure perceptual bias. Dysphoria was associated with less (positively) biased perceptions of peer acceptance for girls, a finding that held even after controlling for socially desirable response tendencies. Positive bias was not characteristic of most nondysphoric adolescents, but only of a subgroup who endorsed very few items on the depress ion inventory. These findings challenge that the view positive biases are characteristic of normal thought and that dysphoric individuals are deficient in a protective, self-enhancing bias.