“Rashomon” and the Componential Approach to Developing Measures of Mood and Behavior

Abstract

Question is raised about how to describe an all-encompassing emotional and cognitive experience as depression, in a manner that makes it amenable to scientific study. Attempts to reduce the state to its mood and behavioral elements appear to violate the essential “wholeness” of the experience, distorting its nature. However, to determine its structure, how the state changes, and is affected by interventions, it is necessary to quantify its elements and to analyze their interactions. The difficulties of previous scientific efforts in separating the elements and quantifying such abstract qualities as feelings are described. A “phenomenological,” non-theoretical approach is adopted for measuring the dimensions of behavior. It is applied in a multihospital study across a diverse sample of depressed patients, aimed at testing hypotheses about the psychobiology of depression. The approach utilizes doctor and patient vantages with established psychological measures, based on an observational method applied in a classic art film, “Rashomon,” to identify the 11 major behavioral components of the disorder. The intensities of the depressed state are measured by integrating the vantages of the clinician and the patient. The descriptions of depression from the empirically derived mood and behavioral constructs are in accord with those eloquently described by the literary artists afflicted with the disorder. To measure “expressive” qualities of the disorder, a new video method, the video interview behavioral evaluation scales (VIBES) is applied. How the “multivantaged method” uncovers the key roles of conflict, anxiety, and hostility in the phenomena of the state is presented