The Relationship Between Domain Satisfaction and Domain Importance: The Moderating Role of Depression

A study involving a large-scale social survey was administered to a representative German sample provided evidence demonstrating three information processing principles associated with life satisfaction judgments: (1) judgments of domain satisfaction tend to influence judgments of domain importance; (2) the effect of domain satisfaction on domain importance tends to be moderated by depressive realism; and (3) depression tends to influence domain satisfaction judgments. Specifically, depression mitigates the influence of domain satisfaction on domain importance. Nondepressed individuals tend to use compensation (an ego-enhancing strategy) to inflate the importance of domains they experience high satisfaction as well as deflate the importance of those domains they experience low satisfaction. As such, the effect of domain satisfaction on domain importance is accentuated for the nondepressed compared to the depressed.