Depressed individuals seem to believe that they are qualitatively inferior; they tend to misinterpret and exaggerate losses and overgeneralize the meaning of self-relevant information. The way in which information about the self is processed by depressed individuals, in particular, the differences in self-schema content (the constellation of attitudes about oneself) between depressed and nondepressed individuals, was studied. Subjects rated a series of personality adjectives, recalled the adjectives, and completed a depressed-versus-nondepressed content rating task and a self-rating task. As predicted, depressed subjects displayed superior recall for self-referenced depressed-content objectives; nondepressed subjects displayed superior recall for self-referenced nondepressed-content adjectives. Study results offer empirical support for the idea that there is a negative self-schema specific to the disorder of depression. (Author/CS)