Vulnerability to depressive symptoms: Clarifying the role of excessive reassurance seeking and perceived social support in an interpersonal model of depression

This study investigated whether key constructs in Coyne’s (1976) interpersonal theory of depression, namely excessive reassurance seeking and social support, combine to confer risk for future depressive symptoms. Consistent with hypotheses, excessive reassurance seeking interacted with changes in perceived social support to predict the prospective development of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the interaction of excessive reassurance seeking and changes in perceived social support were specific to the development of depressive symptoms, but not anxious symptoms. The implications of these results for the interpersonal theories of depression are discussed.