Attributional Style and Depressive Mood Reactions

According to the reformulated learned helplessness model of depression, individuals who characteristically attribute negative events to internal-stable-global causes become depressed when confronted with negative life events. This proposition was tested in a field and a laboratory study in settings with an interpersonal, socially relevant character. In the field study, the attributional style of 86 female college students was investigated before Christmas, and their mood was recorded both before and after Christmas. The laboratory study recorded the mood of 46 female students before and after either success or failure. In both studies changes in depressive mood were predicted by the Attribution X Outcome interaction. The direction and form of the interaction were in line with the diathesis-stress model. In the field study, but not the laboratory study, outcome was a significant predictor of changes in depressive mood.     

Positive life events, attributional style, and hopefulness: testing a model of recovery from depression

A model of a recovery process from depression that is compatible with the hopelessness theory of depressive onset is proposed. This model predicts that depressives who have an enhancing attributional style for positive events (i.e., make global, stable attributions for such events) will be more likely to regain hopefulness and, thereby, recover from depression, when positive events occur. This prediction was tested by following a group of depressed college students longitudinally for 6 weeks. Although neither positive events alone nor attributional style alone predicted reduction in hopelessness, depressives who both showed the enhancing attributional style for positive events and experienced more positive events showed dramatic reductions in hopelessness which were accompanied by remission of depressive symptoms. Thus, attributional style for positive events may be a factor that enables some depressives to recover when positive events occur in their lives.     

Depressive Attributional Style: The Role of Self-Esteem

Two studies evaluate the role of self-esteem in the depressive attributional style. In the first study, college students completed four measures of depression, four measures of self-esteem, and the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). Regression analyses revealed that across measures, self-esteem was a better predictor of attributional style for negative events than was depression. In study two, psychiatric inpatients completed a measure of self-esteem, a measure of depression, and the ASQ. In this clinical sample, self-esteem and depression were highly correlated and both predicted ASQ scores. But when variation in depth of depression and social desirability were removed statistically from the association between self-esteem and attributions for negative outcomes, there remained a significant association between self-esteem and internal, stable, and global attributions for negative outcomes. Controlling for the variation in self-esteem eliminated the relation between depression and depressive attributional style. These findings demonstrate the importance of self-esteem in depressive attributional style in both normal and clinical populations, as well as potential differences in the relations among self-esteem, depression, and attributional style in clinical versus normal samples.     

Importance of attributions as a predictor of how people cope with failure

This study examined the extent to which causal attributions were predictive of depressed mood in college students who experienced a negative event. In a replication and extension of a study by Metalsky, Abramson, Seligman, Semmel, and Peterson (1982), we evaluated students' attributional style and their attributions for an examination performance in the college classroom. Additionally, an indirect probe was used to assess unsolicited attributions. Subjects were asked about their plans to prepare for the next examination in order to test for the motivational deficits predicted by the reformulated learned helplessness (RLH) model. Unlike Metalsky et al., attributional style did not predict depressed mood following a disappointing examination performance. Attributions for the particular examination performance were predictive of depressed mood for students who were disappointed in their examination performance. Few subjects, 31%, gave attributions in response to the indirect probe, and there was no support for the prediction that unexpected negative events would lead to subjects' making more attributions. Internal, stable, and global attributions for poor examination performance resulted in students making more plans to study for the next examination, a finding contrary to what is predicted by the RLH model.     

Attributional style in depression: a meta-analytic review

In this article we report meta-analyses of the relation of attributional styles to depression. In 104 studies involving nearly 15,000 subjects, several attributional patterns had reliable associations with depression scores. For negative events, attributions to internal, stable, and global causes had a reliable and significant association with depression. Studies in which the attribution factors of ability and luck were measured also showed a reliable association with depression. For positive events, attributions to external, unstable, and specific causes were associated with depression. Ability and luck attribution factors for positive events were also associated with depression. The relations for positive events, however, were weaker than the corresponding ones for negative events. In general, these patterns of relations were independent of a number of potential mediators suggested by authors in this literature, including the type of subject studied (psychiatric vs. college student), the type of event about which the attribution is made (real vs. simulated), the depression measure used, or the publication status of the research report. These conclusions are compared with those of other reviews. Implications for attributional models of depression are discussed.     

Mood, recall, and selectivity effects in normal college students

In three experiments we explored the relation between normal variation in depressed mood and memory in college students. Subjects read and subsequently recalled stories whose protagonists experienced good, bad, and neutral events. Contrary to predictions arising independently from capacity theory and from schema theory, the recall of depressed and nondepressed subjects did not differ in either overall level or in affective content. The results are not easily handled by a conceptualization of depression, tied to schema theory, which proposes that negative cognitions are important for the initiation and maintenance of depression. The general usefulness of induction procedures in research on the depressive syndrome is discussed.     

Improving the Performance of Failing Students by Overcoming Their Self-Serving Attributional Biases

The causal impact of attributions on academic performance was examined by changing low-scoring students' attributions regarding their poor performances. Initially, when students who were failing a college course identified the cause of the performance, they emphasized external, uncontrollable causes. Because these self-serving attributions could have perpetuated poor performance on subsequent examinations, students in the experimental condition were exposed to information that suggested that grades in college are caused by internal, controllable factors such as effort and motivation. As predicted, on subsequent tests and on the final examination, these students earned higher grades than control students who received no attributional information. These findings lend support to an attributional model of academic achievement and also suggest that educational interventions that shift attributions away from a self-serving pattern to a performance-facilitating pattern may improve academic outcomes.     

Vulnerability to depressive mood reactions: toward a more powerful test of the diathesis-stress and causal mediation components of the reformulated theory of depression

To provide a more powerful test of the diathesis-stress component of the reformulated theory of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978), we extended and refined the Metalsky, Abramson, Seligman, Semmel, and Peterson (1982) study and examined whether the content of college students' attributional styles (hypothesized attributional diathesis) as measured at Time 1 interacted with the outcomes students received on a class midterm exam to predict their subsequent depressive mood responses. In addition, to test the mediation component of the theory, we examined whether the relation between the hypothesized attributional diathesis and failure students' subsequent depressive mood responses to their low midterm grades was mediated by the particular causal attributions these students made for their low grades. The results partially corroborated the current statement (Abramson, Alloy, & Metalsky, 1986; Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1986a, 1986b) of the diathesis-stress component of the theory. Whereas students' immediate depressive mood reactions were predicted solely by the outcomes they received on the class midterm exams, their enduring depressive mood reactions were predicted solely by the hypothesized Attributional Diathesis X Outcome on Midterm Exam interaction. The direction and form of the interaction were in line with prediction. The results fully corroborated predictions derived from the mediation component of the theory as they applied to students' enduring mood responses.     

Depressive attributions: selection of different causes or assignment of dimensional meanings?

Attributional models of depression suggest that depression is associated with internal, stable, and global causal explanations of events. However, the models do not specify whether the depressive attributional process involves the selection of certain causes, the assignment of dimensional meanings to those causes, or both. A distinction between these two processes was suggested by the findings that the choice of causes does not reliably indicate the perceived dimensions and that there is poor convergence between existing methods that assess causes and those that assess dimensions. When causes and dimensions were each measured in a manner that avoided confounding by the other, each made a unique contribution to the prediction of depression scores. Cause ratings alone were significantly associated with depression scores, but the optimal prediction of depression included both causes and dimensions. The implications of the distinction between these two processes for experimental manipulations of attributions and for reattribution training programs are discussed.     

Modeling the relations of attributional style, expectancies, and depression

Structural modeling techniques were used to assess relations of attributional style, expectancies, and depression. According to an initial theoretical model, attributions are directly related to expectancies, and expectancies are directly related to depression, but attributions are only indirectly related to depression by means of their relation to expectancies. The results of Study 1 indicated that this model was flawed in 2 respects: (a) Attributions for positive and negative events did not form a single latent variable, and (b) attributions for negative events both were indirectly related to depression by means of expectancies and were directly related to depression. Attributions for positive events only were indirectly related to depression by means of expectancies. The model derived in Study 1 was replicated in Study 2. Discussion centers on the interpretation of this modified model and on issues in the measurement of attributional style.     

Depressive implicit associations and adults' reports of childhood abuse

Theory and research suggest that negative events in childhood (e.g., childhood abuse) may contribute to the development of a cognitive vulnerability to depression. A limitation of past research, however, is that the majority has focused on explicit cognitions (e.g., attributional style) and it remains unclear whether similar relations would be observed for more implicit measures of depressive cognitions. This study investigated the relation between young adults' reports of childhood abuse and their implicit depressive cognitions, as measured by the Implicit Association Test. As hypothesised, young adults reporting a history of childhood abuse exhibited stronger implicit associations for depression-relevant stimuli than did individuals with no abuse history. These results were maintained even after statistically controlling for the influence of current depressive symptom levels.     

Enhancing attributional style and positive life events predict increased hopefulness among depressed psychiatric inpatients

A prospective study was conducted to investigate whether enhancing attributional style and positive life events are associated with recovery from depression through the mediation of increased hopefulness, as predicted by the Needles and Abramson (1990) model of recovery from depression. The Attributional Style Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Hopelessness Scale, Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, Uplifts Scale, and Revised Hassles Scale were administered to 32 depressed psychiatric inpatients shortly after admission and readministered a mean of 10 days later. The results indicated that the combined effects of enhancing attributional style and positive life events predicted decreases in hopelessness, which were in turn associated with decreases in depression symptom levels. By contrast, neither the combined effects of depressotypic attributional style and life events nor the combined effects of dysfunctional attitudes and life events was associated with decreases in hopelessness or depression symptom levels.     

Depressive implicit associations and adults' reports of childhood abuse

Theory and research suggest that negative events in childhood (e.g., childhood abuse) may contribute to the development of a cognitive vulnerability to depression. A limitation of past research, however, is that the majority has focused on explicit cognitions (e.g., attributional style) and it remains unclear whether similar relations would be observed for more implicit measures of depressive cognitions. This study investigated the relation between young adults' reports of childhood abuse and their implicit depressive cognitions, as measured by the Implicit Association Test. As hypothesised, young adults reporting a history of childhood abuse exhibited stronger implicit associations for depression-relevant stimuli than did individuals with no abuse history. These results were maintained even after statistically controlling for the influence of current depressive symptom levels.     

Attributional style, depression, and perceptions of consensus for events

This study examined differences between depressed and nondepressed individuals' implicit perceptions of consensus, which may contribute to differences in their attributional styles. Subjects rated the extent to which positive, negative, and neutral events happen to themselves and to the average college student and completed measures of depth of depression and attributional style. Perceptions of consensus were highly correlated with all components of attributional style for negative and positive events. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that ratings of others explained variance in attributional style beyond that explained by ratings of the self for positive but not for negative events. Path analyses, however, indicated that the indirect path from perceptions of consensus to depression mediated through attributional style was nonsignificant for positive events, although it was significant for negative events. These findings are discussed in terms of the role of perceptions of others as precursors of attributional style and depression.     

Learned helplessness, attribution theory, and the nature of cognitions: A critical evaluation

Seligman’s learned helplessness model of depression has received a great deal of attention in the literature during recent years. The model claims that depressives typically invoke internal, stable, and global causal explanations for negative life events. An examination of the experimental evidence suggests that the model does not enjoy unequivocal empirical support. Differences between depressed and nondepressed individuals in terms of their cognitions are found to be both smaller and less consistent than hypothesized, and the causal role ascribed to depressive attributional style is questioned. It is suggested that these inconsistencies arise because of the nature of the experimental work carried out and the failure to examine attributions in ecologically sound environments. Having already turned to attribution theory in order to resolve earlier inconsistencies, it is argued that the model could further benefit from an examination of that part of attribution theory concerned with the circular nature of causal explanation. This review arose from the empirical work of the Leeds Family Research Centre. Department of Psychology, University of Leeds, and in particular has benefited considerably from discussions with Peter Stratton, Dorothy Heard, Helga Hanks, and Chris Brewin.     

Depressive realism and attributional style: implications for individuals at risk for depression

Prior research has found that depressed individuals are more realistic in their interpretations of certain events than nondepressed individuals. However, the implications of this finding for the etiology of depressive disorders have never been clarified. The current investigation sought to remedy this situation by exploring realism in the context of a well-validated, cognitive diathesis-stress theory of the etiology of a subtype of depression: hopelessness theory (Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I., & Alloy, L. B. (1989). Hopelessness depression: A theory-based subtype of depression. Psychological Review, 96, 358-372). A sample of 239 college students, including groups of participants with depressogenic versus nondepressogenic attributional styles, recorded the causes they assigned to events; the extent to which their attributions were objectively realistic was evaluated. A comparison of the degree of objectivity was also made between dysphoric and nondysphoric individuals. Contrary to expectations derived from the depressive realism hypothesis, dysphoric individuals exhibited less realistic attributions as compared to nondysphoric individuals. Further, individuals at risk for depression evidenced a pessimistic bias, while individuals not at risk evidenced an optimistic bias.     

Attributional processing style differences in depressed and nondepressed individuals

A series of four studies used different measures to assess the amount of attributional processing following failure and success. It was found that, from an actor's point of view, relatively depressed students consistently differed from relatively nondepressed students in the amount of their attributional processing. The depressed individuals reported more attributions for both hypothetical and real failure, compared to the nondepressed individuals. They also reported fewer attributions for hypothetical success than the nondepressed individuals. In line with previous findings, depressed individuals took less personal credit for their successes and ascribed their failures more pronouncedly to their lack of ability. The findings reflect a depressive attributional processing style that encompasses individual differences, both in the content and in the amount of causal thinking following failure and success. Integration of this style into the attributional helplessness model of depression is suggested. The findings are compatible with a differential self-esteem view of depression and with aspects of Kuhl's functional helplessness model of depression. Implications for depression therapy are briefly discussed.Financial support for the studies was obtained from the University of Bielefeld (Grants 0Z 2760/2774). I wish to thank Karola Bettmer, Thomas Feld, and Stefan Wächter for their participation in the collection and the preparation of the data, as well as Friedrich Försterling, Jonathan Harrow, Wulf-Uwe Meyer, and two unknown reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

The Depressive Attributions Questionnaire (DAQ): Development of a Short Self-Report Measure of Depressogenic Attributions

A depressogenic attributional style, i.e., internal, stable and global causal interpretations of negative events, is a stable vulnerability factor for depression. Current measures of pessimistic attributional style can be time-consuming to complete, and some are designed for specific use with student populations. We developed and validated a new short questionnaire suitable for the measurement of depressogenic attributions in clinical settings, the Depressive Attributions Questionnaire (DAQ). The 16-item DAQ, and measures of depression and related cognitive concepts were completed by three samples of depressed patients and matched controls, or depressed and non-depressed participants who had been exposed to a recent uncontrollable stressful life event (total N = 375). The DAQ had high (i) internal reliability, (ii) test-retest reliability, (iii) convergent, discriminant and construct validity. It predicted a diagnosis of major depression at 6 months after an uncontrollable stressor, over and above what could be predicted from initial depression severity. Depressed patients rated the scale as acceptable. The DAQ may be a useful short measure of depressogenic attributions, which is easy to administer, and predicts concurrent and future depression. It has possible applications as a screening measure for risk of depression, or as a treatment process measure.     

Self-schemas and risk for depression: a prospective study

The role of depressive self-schemas in vulnerability to depression was explored in a longitudinal design. Five groups of subjects hypothesized to be at differential risk for depression according to a schema model were identified: depressed schematic, depressed nonschematic, nondepressed schematic, nondepressed nonschematic, and a psychopathology control. They were followed regularly for 4 months with self-report and clinical interview measures of depression. There was no evidence of risk for depression associated with schema status apart from initial mood and no interaction of life stress events and schemas. In a second experiment with the same subjects, it was shown that depressive self-schemas do not exert an ongoing, active influence on everyday information processing; instead current mood affected information processing. Remitted depressed persons resembled nondepressed rather than depressed ones. The results support Kuiper and colleagues' distinction between concomitant and vulnerability schemas, and help to clarify differences between cognitions that are symptoms or correlates of depression and those that may play a causal role under certain conditions.     

Developmental differences in cognitive diatheses for child depression

We studied developmental changes in the relation between cognitive style (i.e., attributional style and cognitive errors) and depression in children. Subjects included 409 fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade school children. We hypothesized (1) that evidence congruent with a cognitive diathesis model of depression would emerge with development across middle childhood, (2) that Event × Cognitive Style × Age interactions would be specific to some domains of stressful events but not others, and (3) that interactions would be especially prominent in domains that children regarded as personally important. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that cognitive style moderated the relation between events and self-reported depressive symptoms only in later childhood, and that such interactions were specific to certain domains of stressful events and cognitions. The importance of distinguishing among types of stress and cognitions in future tests of diathesis-stress models of childhood depression are discussed. Implications of developmental differences in the psychopathology of child depression also emerge.