An experimental paradigm for triggering a depressive syndrome

Research investigating whether depression is an adaptation or a disorder has been hindered by the lack of an experimental paradigm that can test causal relationships. Moreover, studies attempting to induce the syndrome often fail to capture the suite of feelings, thoughts, and behaviours that characterize depression. An experimental paradigm for triggering depressive symptoms can improve our etiological understanding of the syndrome. The present study attempts to induce core symptoms of depression, particularly those related to rumination, in a healthy, non-clinical sample through a controlled social experiment. These symptoms are sad or depressed mood, anhedonia, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, and difficulty concentrating. 134 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either an Exclusion (EX) or Inclusion (IN) group. Participants in the Exclusion group were exposed to a modified Cyberball paradigm, designed to make them feel socially excluded, followed by a dual-interferenc..., Our datasets were collected through LimeSurvey, an open source on-line statistical survey web app. We first exported our data as excel files which contain participants' self-reported data. We also added the scores for each participants' writing task provided by our blind-raters. We have presented the data from our primary study and our pilot study in two seperate files., , # Data from: An experimental paradigm for triggering a depressive syndrome

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh2v](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh2v)

## Description of the data and file structure

\# Title of Dataset: **PilotExperiment**

This file is our overall dataset for the pilot study detailed in our manuscript and supplementary materials.

\## Description of the Data and file structure

The following is a description of each of the variables found in our data set, organized by column: 

*Note*: any ‘.’ within the dataset refers to missing data. 

\**Date: **The date the participant completed the study.

\**ID: **The randomized ID given to each participant.

\**Cond: **The condition that the participant was assigned to (1=Exclusion; 0=Inclusion).

\**Mood Variables: **Scores for the following mood variables at time 1 are found in their respective columns. These same mood variables, at time 2, have the same names but have a ‘2’ afterwards. Variables over 7 characters were...