For the depressed participants, the MINI should confirm that they had experienced depressive episodes in the past and met criteria for a major depressive episode at the time of the study. The MINI will also be employed to exclude individuals with any other significant psychiatric history besides anxiety. Before the study, all participants should complete the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et. al., 1961). Ideally, we would expect a majority of depressed participants to be mildly depressed, followed by moderately ones, and with a minority of severely depressed. All participants should receive informed consent and compensation for their time. Procedure • Time 1: participants are introduced to an adapted version of the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT)1, and are told that they have the opportunity to be additionally compensated according to their performance on the exam and the accuracy with which they predict their objective scores on the exam. They are informed that they have 2 opportunities during the study to guess their scores, and they can change their answers without monetary penalty. All participants will take the exam and researchers will collect their respective scores. • Time 2: directly following exam completion, participants are asked to predict their score, from 0% to 100%. Additionally, they are prompted to guess how well they performed in relation to the other participants in the laboratory room. • Time 3: depressed and elated mood states are induced in 100 controls and 100 depressed individuals, respectively. Depressed mood will be induced in healthy controls by having them
1 The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) is a group-administered assessment intended to estimate reasoning and problem solving abilities using verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal (spatial) symbols (Lohman & Hagen, 2001a). 68