Depression, self-esteem, and complex attributions for life problems

Past research has suggested that mild and moderate depression are associated with increased attributional processing and a tendency to make complex attributions involving two or more causes. The present research tested the hypothesis that depression and low self-esteem are associated with a tendency to make attributions to multiple causes when faced with life problems. The results were used to demonstrate that the tendency to make multiple attributions for specific life problems accounts for unique variance in depression and self-esteem scores, even after removing variance due to general attributional style. The findings are discussed with reference to the need for multidimensional models of attribution in depression and attributional retraining efforts to include an emphasis on individual differences in the number of multiple attributions made by people.