Attributions about Self and Others in Depression

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The attributional reformulation of the learned helplessness model of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) holds that depression-prone individuals are characterized by a certain attributional style. Specifically, they are seen as making internal, stable, and global attributions for negative outcomes. One implication of the attributional model tested by the present study, is that depression-prone persons should not evince this attributional style for negative outcomes that occur to others. The data presented here supported this prediction. Depressed subjects made self-attributions for negative outcomes that were significantly more internal, stable, and global than those of nondepressed subjects, while no differences were observed when both groups made attributions for the negative outcomes of a target other. The implications of these results for the attributional model of depression are discussed.

This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit: