• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.599-618
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• 2016

The relationship between dependent personality traits and depression has been widely studied in the field of psychology. However, the existing evidence is mixed and often contradictory, obscuring the precise nature of this relationship. Given that the most common method of measuring the construct of dependency has been to administer self-report instruments, it is possible that implicit dependency, another parameter of dependency that is distinct from explicit dependency measured via self-report, is confounding these results. The current study aimed to clarify the relationship between dependency and depression by comparing the effect of implicit and explicit dependency. Implicit dependency was measured via the Single Category-Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT), a test of implicit personality that has shown to have good validity and reliability in previous studies. In addition, we examined the effect of gender on this relationship, given the potential role of gender stereotype that may make male participants show lower levels of dependency when measured through self-report (vs. SC-IAT). Results showed that implicit and explicit dependency indeed had separate and distinct relationships, and the relationships depends on participants' gender. Among female participants, increased explicit dependency predicted depression only when implicit dependency was also elevated. In contrast, explicit dependency predicted depression regardless of the level of implicit dependency in male participants. These findings suggest that implicit and explicit dependency may be separate parameters capturing different aspects of dependent personality traits, further supporting the need to consider the implicit aspect of personality in personality assessment research. Implications and limitations of the current findings and directions for future research are discussed.