Systematic and Depressive Attributions

Question 1

Attributions and emotional liability

Answer 1

Schachter and Singer suggested that emotions are product of 1) ambiguous physiological arousal and 2) cognition which labels arousal and to an emotional circumstance.

Question 2

Systematic attributions

Answer 2

Systematic attributions are viewed as a stable tendency and are believed to be associated with the development of depression

Question 3

Learned helplessness

Answer 3

Seligman’s dog experiments showed that dogs “learnt” that there was no between their actions and whether they received shocks. Learned helplessness is characterised by cognitive/emotional/motivational deficits, like depression. This model does not account for the chronic nature of depression

Question 4

Depressive attribution styles

Answer 4

Depressive attributional styles are Internal, Stable and Global. Optimistic attributional styles are the opposite of these. Attributing uncontrollable negative events to oneself is more likely to cause depression.

Question 5

Attributional style as an account of depression

Answer 5

Seligman et al. (1979) showed high correlations between internality, stability and globailty with depression scores. But does this imply a direction to attribution style/depression? 1995 study found that children who ranked higher for depression attributional styles were more depressed by low exam grades.

Question 6

Depressive realism

Answer 6

Self-serving bias helps people take a positive view and credits them with with causing good events and externalises the cause of bad events. Is “depressive attribution” an absence of a self-serving bias?