Depressive attributional style and depression following childbirth.

Abstract

are stable to the extent that causal factors are expected to be long-lived or recurrent rather than short-lived or intermittent.Attributions are global to the extent that causes are believed to affect a broad range of situations rather than a limited set of circumstances.An individual who responds to failure on a mathematics test by saying "I'll always be a failure in everything I do" exhibits rather extreme internal, stable, and global attributions for the failure.On the other hand, an individual who responds to a similar situation by saying "Some of the questions in this week's test were extraordinarily difficult" exhibits external, unstable, and specific attributions.The reformulated learned helplessness model holds that individuals who make internal attributions for perceived noncontingency are likely to suffer deficits of self-esteem, and to blame themselves for events they believe they cannot control.It is also hypothesized that stable attributions will tend to extend the duration of deficits over time, and that global attributions are likely to result in the generalization of deficits to a variety of situations.Thus, the hypothesized depressive attributional style, consisting of internal, stable, and global attributions for undesired outcomes, is posited to lead to an expectation of future noncontingency and thus to symptoms of helplessness.According to the model, individuals with this type of attributional style are more likely to become depressed when faced with important life events that are perceived as uncontrollable.Abramson et al. (1978) further suggest that the model has preventative implications in that it may be possible to identify people who are depression-prone prior to the actual onset of depression by assessing their attributional style.In a subsequent publication, Seligman, Abramson, Semmel, and von Baeyer (1979) addressed themselves more specifically to the notion of a depressive attributional style.An attributional style questionnaire (Peterson, Semmel, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky, & Seligman, Note 1) was developed to assess each of the three relevant attributional dimensions.The questionnaire yields scores for each dimension as well as a composite attributional score.The authors found that for hypothetical negative outcomes, internal, stable, global, and composite scores each correlated significantly with measures of depression in a group of college undergraduates.Seligman et al. (1979) concluded that their findings supported both the notion of a depressive attributional style and the reformulated learned helplessness model of depression..They did point out that the "model predicts that the insidious attributional style for bad outcomes does not by itself result in depression" (Seligman et al., 1979, p. 246), but that depression ensues when these types of attributions are made for important life events.Although not made explicit by the authors, the assumption seems to be that the more strongly an individual exhibits this attributional style for hypothetical situations, the more likely the individual is to make similar attributions for important life events, and thus the more likely to become depressed following such events.A number of questions arise from the Seligman et al. (1979) study.The most obvious, as pointed out by the authors, is whether the results generalize to other populations.A second question is to what extent attributional style, as assessed by the Peterson et al. (Note 1) scale, has predictive value in identifying depression-prone individuals prior to the onset of depression.As Seligman et al. (1979) have noted, their study supports the hypothesis that depression and attributional style are related, at least in college undergraduates, but does not inform us as to the direction of the relationship.It may be interesting to examine whether individuals identified as depression-prone according to their attributional