Depressive symptoms affect around half of students at some point during college.
According to the hopelessness theory of depression, making negative inferences about
stressful events is a vulnerability for developing depression. Negative and socioemotional
teaching behavior can be stressors that are associated with depression in
school students. First-time college freshmen completed the Cognitive Style
Questionnaire (CSQ), Teaching Behavior Questionnaire (TBQ), and Center for
Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). While completing the TBQ,
participants reported on a teacher from prior education to college. Multiple regression
analysis found significant effects of the independent variables (four teaching behavior
types, inferential style, and interactions between the four teaching behavior types and
inferential style) on the dependent variable (depressive symptoms). More specifically,
negative and socio-emotional teaching behavior were positively associated with
depressive symptoms and instructional and organizational teaching behavior were
negatively associated with depressive symptoms. Both organizational and negative
teaching behavior interacted significantly with inferential style. Organizational and
negative teaching behavior shared different relationships with depressive symptoms
depending upon an individual‟s level of inferential style. Promotion of instructional and
organizational teaching behavior in school as well as the reduction of negative teaching
behavior may be useful in reducing students‟ depressive symptoms