| Abstract: | The reformulated helplessness model of depression predicts that depressed persons attribute negative life events to internal, stable, and global causes while attributing positive life events to external, unstable, and specific causes. In addition to these hypotheses, the present author predicted that depressed persons would attribute negative life events to more controllable causes when compared with nondepressed persons. A 3rd prediction was that depressed persons' controllable causal attributions would be more closely related to independent judgments of the controllability of events than would the attributions of nondepressed persons. These predictions were examined in 45 depressed and 46 nondepressed female undergraduates (determined by the Beck Depression Inventory). Ss reported important personal events, provided untutored explanations of their causes, and rated the importance of particular causes of these events. Results confirm predictions for the internal dimension and the controllable dimension for negative events. Results do not support the 3rd prediction. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
