ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1519595
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychopathological and behavioral trajectories in transitional-age youth: Innovative approaches and paradigmsView all 4 articles
The Impact of Adolescent Clinical Depression and Depressive Symptoms on Moral Thinking: Based on Process Dissociation Approach
Provisionally accepted
- 1Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
- 2First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
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Background: Adolescence is a critical period for moral development, and depression significantly impacts this process by altering cognitive and emotional processing, affecting the resolution of moral dilemmas. Rumination, closely linked to depression, also influences emotional and cognitive processing during moral judgments.Methods: Study 1 examined 34 depressed adolescents and 36 healthy controls who completed the Beck Depression Inventory-Short Form (Beck et al., 1961) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck et al., 1988), followed by 20 moral dilemmas from the Process Dissociation (PD) procedure. Study 2 (n = 568) explored subclinical depressive symptoms and their antecedent role of rumination on moral judgments. The SCL-90 scale measured depression, paranoid ideation, and hostility, while the Positive and Negative Rumination scales assessed rumination levels.Results: Clinically depressed adolescents showed significantly reduced reliance on both utilitarian (t(65) = -3.90, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.95, 95%CI[-0.18, -0.06]) and deontological tendencies (t(65) = -3.03, p = 0.004, Cohen’s d = 0.74, 95%CI[-0.25, -0.05), compared to control group. Subclinical depressive symptoms predicted lower deontological tendencies (β = -0.13, t(566) = -3.09, p = 0.02, 95%CI[-0.05, -0.01]). Sequential mediation analyses revealed: (a) Negative rumination → depression → paranoid ideation → deontological decline (Indirect effect: b = -0.003, 95%CI[-0.005, -0.001]); (b) Negative rumination → depression → hostility → deontological decline (Indirect effect: b = -0.003, 95%CI[-0.005, -0.0004]). Negative rumination exacerbated depressive symptoms, which sequentially increased paranoid ideation and hostility, ultimately lowering deontological judgments.Conclusions: Clinical depression decreases deontological and utilitarian moral reasoning, while negative rumination exacerbated depressive symptoms, which sequentially increased paranoid ideation and hostility, ultimately lowering deontological judgments. These findings highlight depression’s nuanced impact on adolescent moral development and underscore transdiagnostic mechanisms requiring targeted intervention.
Keywords: Moral thinking, Process Dissociation Procedure, Deontological, utilitarianism, Clinical depression, Subclinical depressive symptoms, adolescents, rumination
Received: 30 Oct 2024; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Ma and He. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Mufan Zheng, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Jin He, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450052, Henan Province, China
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