The first of these dimensions is internality versus externality, which is very similar to Rotter’s (1966) notion of Locus of Control. This notion states that people differ in the way they gain positive or negative reinforcement from life events and can either take an internal form, in which people believe that it is them, the person that has the ability to control reinforcing events, or an external form, where it is believed that luck, chance or another external factor controls reinforcing life events. The second dimension that attributions can be based around is that of stability, where a stable attribution means the cause of an event is relevant at all times, whereas an unstable attribution means the cause of an event could change at any time and is relatively unimportant to the individual. The third dimension concerns the degree of influence the cause of a specific event has over other aspects of life and can either take a global or a specific form. If a global attribution is made, the cause of an event will have a significant and prominent effect on other aspects of life, whereas a cause may have no effect on any other aspects if a specific attribution is made.
Abramson et al (1978) propose that a person with a depressogenic nature has a pessimistic attributional style, and using the dimensions afore mentioned, results in a person negatively attributing events to causes which are internal, stable and global meaning they have no control over them, they are an enduring and relevant factor and have a significant effect over other aspects of life. Conversely, those people that are not depressed display an optimistic attributional style which consists of the opposite attributes to the ones assigned to a depressed individual.
There is some strong evidence to support this model, including that from Peterson et al (1982) who found that depressed patients scored higher for internality, stability and globality when compared to schizophrenics and patients undergoing medical surgery. Seligman et al (1979) also found high correlations between these three factors with depression scores sought from the Beck Depression Inventory. However, these results are purely correlational in the fact that no differentiation can be made between cause and effect. It could be the case that the people that took part in these studies are depressed because they have a negative attributional style, but it could also be said that they a negative attributional style as a result of their depression caused by something else.
“The current conceptualisation of attributional style is closely tied to the way it is measured” (Hill and Larson 1992) and it is the case that attributional style is measured only as the initial attribution the individual makes following each negative event. This then, infers that attributions made towards an event are static and cannot change over time. Work by Moore et al (1979) however, proposes that this is not necessarily accurate and suggests that further study into depression and attributional style may also need to include the pattern of change in the characteristics of the attributions made towards a specific event, over time. It could well be the case that attributional style “may not be fully represented by the trends in the initial attributions individuals make for separate outcome events” (Hill and Larson, 1992).
Unfortunately, the learned helplessness model of Abramson et al (1978) does not clearly define at what point after an event attributions and subsequent attributional style should be measured and the model also does not state whether individuals susceptible to depression show differences from those who are not, when the events in question become progressively distant and this fact proves to be the most significant critique of the model to date.
Brown (1986) suggests that a depressive or negative attributional style could actually be an absence of what is known as a “self serving bias”. This bias is considered a normal attributional style in which people naturally take a positive and reinforcing view of situations and events and credit themselves with causing good events and essentially externalising any bad events that occur. It could be the case then that the depressive attributional style operationalised by Abramson et al is actually a realistic attributional style, and those people with an apparent self serving bias are in fact being overly optimistic. Research by Alloy and Abramson (1979) supports this notion by finding that a depressive attribution of control was in fact, more realistic.
It is clear from research and evidence that attributions and attributional style do play an undeniably significant role in the development of depression, but it is also clear from the apparent critique of models concerning attributions and depression that it is not the only factor that plays a part in its cause. The fact of chronicity within depression cannot be explained using theories of attribution and it is highly probable that this factor can be explained in terms of a neurobiological basis, including the monoamine hypothesis, where a lack of significant neurotransmitters within the brain can cause certain depressive symptoms along a continuum, depending on the severity of the lack of the particular neurotransmitter in question.
Beck (1967) also proposed a theory that looked at the cognitive aspects of depression which the attributional theories fail to do. The cognitive aspects could also explain why there are differences in the severity of depression, like a biological view does, and also explains how depression can initially occur within an individual, which is absent in attributional theories, by looking at past life events that have been particularly traumatic. These life events cause schema to be held within the long term memory consistent with experience and negative experiences, such as a loss of a parent or incidences of bullying when a child can lead to dysfunctional beliefs about the world which can be triggered in later life by “negative automatic thoughts” (Beck, 1967) of which an individual has no control over. These negative thoughts then can go on to cause symptoms of depression.
It is clear that although attributions do go some way to explain why depression occurs and clearly display some importance when describing why depression occurs, this is not the single, most important factor because it cannot explain everything about depressive symptoms. For these explanations, one must turn to other theories of a biological or a cognitive nature, but it is definitely the case that these models could go further in explaining the occurrence of depression by taking attributional aspects into account.
References
Abramson, L, Y, Seligman, M.E.P & Teasdale, J.D (1978) Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49-74
Alloy, L. B. & Abramson, L. Y. (1979) Judgement of contingency in depressed and non-depressed subjects: Sadder but wiser? Journal of Experimental Psychology, 108, 443-479.
Beck, A.T. (1967). Depression: Clinical, experimental and theoretical aspects. New York: Hoeber.
Brown, R (1986). Social Psychology: The Second Edition. London: The Free Press
Hill, K & Larson, L.M (1992). Attributional Style in the Reformulated Learned Helplessness Model of Depression: Cognitive Processes and Measurement Implications. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 16, pp83-94.
Peterson, C. R., SE, A., Von Baeyer, C., Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I. & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982) The Attributional Style Questionnaire. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6, 287–300.
Rotter, J.B (1966). Generalised expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80.
Seligman, M.E.P (1974). Depression and learned helplessness. In R.J. Friedman & M.M. Katz (Eds), The psychology of depressions: Contemporary theory and research (pp.83-113). Washington, DC: Winston-Wiley.
Seligman, M.E.P, Abramson, L.Y, Semmel, A, & Von Baeyer, C (1979). Depressive attributional style. Journal of abnormal Psychology, 88. pp 242-247
