systematic attributions and depression lect 4

Question 1

schachter and singer 2 factor theory of emotion

Answer 1

-people use cues to label ambiguous arousal
-emotions differ according to how arousal is attributed
-model believes emotion is a product of:
1.ambiguous physiological arousal
2.cog. which labels the cause of the arousal

Question 2

schachter and singer study

Answer 2

3 groups of pp
1.informed adrenaline administered group
2.uninformed adrenaline administered group
3.no adrenaline group
-each pp placed in room with confederate
-confederate behaves either euphorically or angrily
-the informed adrenaline group can explain their arousal so emotion will not match the confederates
-control group have no increased arousal (no adrenaline), so emotion will not match confederates
-uninformed adrenaline group cannot explain their behaviour (cued emotion - so experience emotion similar to confederate)
-the way people attribute the cause of arousal causes emotion

Question 3

what are the systematic attributions to understand depression

Answer 3

1.learned helplessness
2.attributional style

Question 4

what is attributional style

Answer 4

tendency to make particular kinds of causal inferences rather than others across diff situations and across time

Question 5

learned helplessness

Answer 5

seligman: depression is a result of learned helplessness
-phase 1: dogs receive electric shock they could not escape (pavlovian hammock)
-phase 2: 24 hrs later dogs placed in 2 compartment box, shocks administered and dogs could easily escape shocks
RESULTS
-2/3 dogs failed to attempt to escape
-control dogs (no phase 1) all escaped
-phase 1 dogs learned no connection between actions and receiving shocks
-learned helplessness generalised to phase 2 and here the dogs looked depressed

Question 6

learned helplessness parallel to human depression

Answer 6

1.people experience events attributed as uncontrollable
2.reinforces helplessness
3.leads to passive behaviour in adverse situations
4.inability to learn from successful escape responses

Question 7

goodman and hess 1999

Answer 7

-looked at depression in people with ICD (defibrillator)
-shocks not predictable and can be distressing
-no. of ICD shocks is sig predictor of depressive symptoms
-depression could be linked to the unpredictability of ICD shocks

Question 8

criticism of learned helplessness as an account for depression

Answer 8

-seligman’s theory focused on lack of control
BUT
-there is more to depression than lack of control
-learned helplessness does not account for chronicity and generality of depression

Question 9

what are abramson’s 2 factors on depression

Answer 9

-attributions of why bad situations occur
-dispositional way people make attributions

Question 10

abramsons 3 dimensions

Answer 10

1. internality - externality
   -locus of control
   -accounts for self esteem deficits in depression

2.stable - unstable
-temporal permanence of cause
-accounts for chronicity of depression

3.global - specific
-degree of influence cause of depression has over other aspects of life
-accounts for generality/pervasiveness of depression

Question 11

pessimistic attributional style

Answer 11

vulnerability to depression
-tendency to attribute neg events to causes that are: internal, stable (enduring) and global (affects many aspects)
-tendency to attribute pos events to causes that are: external, unstable, specific (only affects one aspect)
(people who are optimistic do the opposite)

Question 12

attributional style implies consistency over time

Answer 12

peterson attributional style questionnaire
-gave questionnaire to pp at diff times
-correlation between scores at 2 diff time points

Question 13

seligman research

Answer 13

-143 student pp completed beck depression inventry
-correlations between attributional components and dep. were:
dep + internality = .41
dep + stability = .34
dep + globality = .35
-weakness: just correlational, just student population

Question 14

Raps study

Answer 14

-compared attributional style between patients hospitalised for:
unipolar depression, schizophrenia, medical surgery
-patients with depression had higher scores for internality, stability and globality with unipolar depression and schizophrenia than those who had had medical surgery

Question 15

hilsman and garber study

Answer 15

-measured attributional style and depression in children before and following poor grades to school test
-kids who had depressed attributional style had increased depression after receiving poor grades

Question 16

what is self serving bias

Answer 16

-normal attributional style where people take a pos view
-taking credit for good events
-externalising cause of bad events
(people with depression may not show this bias)

Question 17

alloy and abramson

Answer 17

-pp press a button when a yellow light comes on
-either pressing or not pressing depends on rules of program, pp do not know rules but have to work them out to get most points
-whether light comes on is entirely random and there are actually no rules but pp are unaware
-people with elevated depression had better grasp of random nature of the study, realistic in attributing cause

Question 18

why is it that non depressed people have a self serving bias which is not realistic

Answer 18

-can be protective to indiv in diff circumstances

Question 19

carver

Answer 19

study of adjustment to having breast cancer
-found optimists less likely to give up and adjusted better than pessimists

Question 20

moore and fresco

Answer 20

-meta analysis of 75 studies
-found small dep realism effect
-everyone has self serving bias but people with depression may have it slightly less