| Abstract: | Undergraduate women with a helpless or nonhelpless attributional style as measured by the Attributional Style Questionnaire were subjected to social failure or success (interaction with unresponsive or responsive confederates). Subsequently, each interacted with a second naive subject. As predicted, individuals with a helpless attributional style became depressed and hostile (as measured by the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List) after interacting with an unresponsive confederate. Furthermore, in comparison with nonhelpless subjects, helpless subjects who interacted with the unresponsive confederate evidenced more tension in their voices during both interactions and less pleasantness in their nonverbal behavior during the second interaction. Overall, the second group of subjects did not respond differently to the first group of subjects as an interactive function of attributions and experimental condition of the initial subjects. However, helpless subjects in the second group spoke less, were less nonverbally pleasant, and became more hostile than did nonhelpless subjects after interacting with individuals who had previously interacted with an unresponsive confederate. A consistent but unexpected pattern was found for nonhelpless subjects: They responded more adaptively to stressful than to nonstressful interactions. Results are interpreted as providing support for a vulnerability model of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
