Japanese psychiatrists have proposed a new type of depression characterized by passing blame and irritability, which worsens on working days. This new type of depression is assumed to be closely associated with two personality traits: Interpersonal sensitivity, which reflects the tendency to be excessively concerned about or overreact to others’ negative evaluations, and privileged self, which reflects the tendency to pursue own pleasures at the expense of maintaining harmony with others. Although a previous longitudinal study showed that these traits can lead to interpersonal stress generation among university students, it did not control for the influence of baseline negative events, nor use a scale that separately assessed negative dependent events caused by the participants’ behaviors and negative independent events occurring outside the participants’ control. The current study addressed these limitations and investigated whether interpersonal sensitivity and privileged self led to stress generation and increased depressive symptoms. Undergraduate and graduate students in Japan (N = 265) responded to self-report measures twice at an interval of four weeks. The results indicated that privileged self was related to an increase in subsequent experiences of negative dependent and independent events after controlling for either category of events experienced at the baseline. These findings suggest that privileged self can lead to stress generation or the perception that surrounding circumstances are worse than they are. Furthermore, privileged self was associated with an increase in subsequent depressive symptoms via experiences of negative interpersonal dependent events.

日本精神病学家提出了一种新型抑郁症，其特点是推卸责任和易怒，这种情况在工作日会恶化。这种新型抑郁症被认为与两种人格特质密切相关：人际敏感性，反映了过度关注或对他人负面评价反应过度的倾向；以及特权自我，反映了追求自己快乐的倾向。维持与他人和谐的代价。尽管之前的纵向研究表明这些特质会导致大学生产生人际压力，但它没有控制基线负面事件的影响，也没有使用单独评估参与者行为引起的负面依赖事件和负面独立事件的量表。发生在参与者控制之外的事件。目前的研究解决了这些局限性，并调查了人际敏感性和特权自我是否会导致压力产生和抑郁症状增加。日本的本科生和研究生（N = 265）每隔四个星期对自我报告措施做出两次答复。结果表明，在控制基线经历的任何一类事件后，特权自我与随后经历的消极依赖和独立事件的增加有关。这些发现表明，特权自我会导致压力产生或认为周围环境比实际情况更糟糕。此外，特权自我与通过消极的人际依赖事件的经历而导致的抑郁症状的增加有关。