Contradicting effects of self-insight: Self-insight can conditionally contribute to increased depressive symptoms

- Self-insight has been considered as a factor that enhances psychological adjustment.
- However, we found that the adaptive effect of self-insight was conditional.
- Self-insight with high negative self-complexity was related to increased depression.

Past research has suggested that self-insight functions as a genuine factor to enhance psychological adjustment. However, because most of the previous studies had used a cross-sectional design, a prospective study was warranted to establish the temporal and causal relationship between self-insight and depressive symptoms. Another important issue was that there seems to be a moderator that influences the adaptive function of self-insight. Stein and Grant (2014) suggested that positive self-evaluation mediates the association between self-insight and well-being. This result could imply that self-insight does not lead to well-being with negative self-evaluation. In this study, therefore, we conducted a longitudinal questionnaire survey to examine the prospective effect of self-insight on future depressive symptoms with self-complexity as a putative moderator. A complete dataset of 93 Japanese undergraduates was analyzed. The prospective analysis showed a significant moderating role of negative self-complexity in the associations among self-insight, depressive symptoms, and stress; people with high self-insight and low negative self-complexity were less likely to be influenced by stressors, whereas those with high self-insight and high negative self-complexity showed significant increases in depressive symptoms after stressful experiences. These findings implicate that the adaptive effect of self-insight can be conditional depending on the extent of negative self-complexity.