The Children's Attributional Style Interview: developmental tests of cognitive diathesis-stress theories of depression.

This paper presents an initial assessment of the Children's Attributional Style Interview (CASI), a newly designed measure for assessing attributional style in young children (age 5 and up). The CASI was used to conduct prospective tests of the reformulated helplessness and the integrated hopelessness/self-esteem theories of depression in a sample of 147 5-10-year-old children. For comparison, the same tests were also conducted with the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire-Revised, a commonly used measure for assessing attributional style in older children (age 8 and up). The CASI evidenced support of the reformulated helplessness theory and partial support of the integrated hopelessness/self-esteem theory. The CASI also demonstrated good internal consistency. Thus, our findings provide initial support for the CASI as a methodologically sound measure of attributional style for children as young as 5 years old. Although preliminary, our findings also suggest possible developmental differences in how attributional style interacts with self-esteem and negative life stress. The CASI should prove to be a useful tool in furthering the understanding of the origins and development of attributional style in childhood, as well as its contribution to the understanding of the development and prevention of depressive symptomatology in children.

Excessive reassurance seeking: delineating a risk factor involved in the development of depressive symptoms.

Six studies investigated (a) the construct validity of reassurance seeking and (b) reassurance seeking as a specific vulnerability factor for depressive symptoms. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that reassurance seeking is a reasonably cohesive, replicable, and valid construct, discernible from related interpersonal variables. Study 3 demonstrated that reassurance seeking displayed diagnostic specificity to depression, whereas other interpersonal variables did not, in a sample of clinically diagnosed participants. Study 4 prospectively assessed a group of initially symptom-free participants, and showed that those who developed future depressive symptoms (as compared with those who remained symptom-free) obtained elevated reassurance-seeking scores at baseline, when all participants were symptom-free, but did not obtain elevated scores on other interpersonal variables. Studies 5 and 6 indicate that reassurance seeking predicts future depressive reactions to stress. Taken together, the six studies support the construct validity of reassurance seeking, as well as its potential role as a specific vulnerability factor for depression.

Hopelessness depression as a distinct dimension of depressive symptoms among clinical and non-clinical samples.

Subtyping depression has been an interest of theorists and clinicians for at least four centuries. In this paper, we examined the validity of the symptom cluster component of the hopelessness theory of depression. We used structural equation modeling analyses on large samples of psychiatric outpatients (N=1604, 844, and 680) and Air Force cadets (N=1404) who completed the items of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Findings were supportive of the hopelessness depression cluster as a distinct depressive syndrome. Implications for the nosology of depression and for depression theory were discussed.

Hopelessness as a mediator of the association between social support and depressive symptoms: findings of a study of men with HIV.

Data from a prospective longitudinal study were used to investigate whether hopelessness mediates the association between social support and depression, as hypothesized by L. Y. Abramson, G. I. Metalsky, and L. B. Alloy (1989). Measures of hopelessness, social support, and depression were administered to 103 HIV-infected men and readministered 6 months later. Findings indicated that low baseline social support predicted increases in hopelessness and depression. Increases in hopelessness predicted increases in depression after controlling for baseline social support. Low baseline social support did not predict increased depression when hopelessness was controlled statistically.

A prospective test of an integrative interpersonal theory of depression: a naturalistic study of college roommates.

This study tested an integrated interpersonal theory of depression, which combines J. C. Coyne's (1976b) interpersonal theory of depression with work on the interplay between self-enhancement and self-consistency theory. Students' (targets') and their same-gender roommates' appraisals of each other, depression and anxiety levels, reassurance seeking, and negative feedback seeking were assessed at Time 1 (T1), and again at Time 2 (T2), 3 weeks later. Consistent with the theoretical integration (a) Depressed targets reported engaging in more negative feedback seeking than nondepressed targets, and tended to report seeking more reassurance than nondepressed targets at T1; (b) For male (but not female) targets, the combination of negative feedback seeking, high reassurance seeking, and depression at T1 predicted T1 to T2 increases in rejection by roommates; and (c) Rejection effects applied to depressive symptoms, but not anxious symptoms or anhedonic mood.

Depressive reactions to failure in a naturalistic setting: a test of the hopelessness and self-esteem theories of depression.

We tested the hopelessness and self-esteem theories of depression and an integration of the two by examining whether a stable, global attributional style (attributional diathesis) and low self-esteem interacted with the outcomes students received on a midterm examination to predict their subsequent depressive reactions over the course of 5 days. Students' immediate depressive reactions (on receipt of grades) were predicted solely by the examination outcome, whereas their enduring depressive reactions during the following 4 days were predicted by the Attributional Diathesis x Low Self-Esteem x Failure interaction. The results also indicated that the three-way interaction predicted enduring depressive reactions through the mediating role of hopelessness.

Vulnerability to depressive symptomatology: a prospective test of the diathesis-stress and causal mediation components of the hopelessness theory of depression.

The diathesis-stress and causal mediation components of the hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989) were tested using a prospective methodology. Measures of the 3 vulnerability factors posited by the theory (cognitive diatheses about cause, consequences, and self) were completed by 152 Ss at Time (T) 1. Ss completed measures of depressive symptoms, anxious symptoms, and hopelessness at T1 and again at T2, 5 weeks later. Naturally occurring stressors were assessed at T2 (covering the T1-T2 interval). Consistent with the diathesis-stress component, each Cognitive Diathesis x Stress (CD x S) interaction predicted onset of depressive symptoms from T1 to T2. In contrast, the CD x S interactions predicted neither state nor trait anxiety. In addition, 2 of the 3 CD x S interactions (those involving cause and self, but not consequences) were partially mediated by hopelessness. Implications for future work on the hopelessness theory of depression are discussed.

When depression breeds contempt: reassurance seeking, self-esteem, and rejection of depressed college students by their roommates.

To test Coyne's (1976b) theory of depression, students' levels of depressive symptoms, reassurance seeking, and self-esteem were assessed at Time 1, and their same-gender roommates' appraisals of them were assessed 5 weeks later. Mildly depressed students engaged in the type of reassurance seeking described by Coyne. Among men, but not women, mildly depressed students were rejected if they strongly sought reassurance and had low self-esteem but not if they did not seek reassurance or had high self-esteem. Although induction of depressed symptoms in roommates did occur, this contagion effect did not account for the depression-rejection relationship. The prediction that unsupportive, intolerant, or unempathic others would be particularly likely to respond with rejection to reassurance-seeking depressed students with low self-esteem received partial support. Implications for future work on the interpersonal aspects of depression are discussed.

The hopelessness theory of depression: attributional aspects.

In this article, we clarify, expand and revise the basic postulates of the hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Alloy & Metalsky, 1988a; Abramson, Metalsky & Alloy, 1987, 1988b; previously referred to as the reformulated helplessness theory of depression: Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978) and place the theory more explicitly in the context of work in descriptive psychiatry about the heterogeneity among the depressive disorders. We suggest that the hopelessness theory hypothesizes the existence in nature of an, as yet, unidentified subtype of depression--'hopelessness depression'--defined, in part, by its cause. We then give a critique of work conducted to test the hopelessness theory and explicate the limitations in research strategy associated with this line of work. Our critique includes a logical analysis that deduces the conceptual and methodological inadequacies of the research strategies used to test the theory. Finally, we suggest more adequate research strategies for testing the hopelessness theory and discuss conceptual and assessment issues that will arise in conducting such tests with special emphasis on attributional styles.

Vulnerability to depressive mood reactions: toward a more powerful test of the diathesis-stress and causal mediation components of the reformulated theory of depression.

To provide a more powerful test of the diathesis-stress component of the reformulated theory of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978), we extended and refined the Metalsky, Abramson, Seligman, Semmel, and Peterson (1982) study and examined whether the content of college students' attributional styles (hypothesized attributional diathesis) as measured at Time 1 interacted with the outcomes students received on a class midterm exam to predict their subsequent depressive mood responses. In addition, to test the mediation component of the theory, we examined whether the relation between the hypothesized attributional diathesis and failure students' subsequent depressive mood responses to their low midterm grades was mediated by the particular causal attributions these students made for their low grades. The results partially corroborated the current statement (Abramson, Alloy, & Metalsky, 1986; Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1986a, 1986b) of the diathesis-stress component of the theory. Whereas students' immediate depressive mood reactions were predicted solely by the outcomes they received on the class midterm exams, their enduring depressive mood reactions were predicted solely by the hypothesized Attributional Diathesis X Outcome on Midterm Exam interaction. The direction and form of the interaction were in line with prediction. The results fully corroborated predictions derived from the mediation component of the theory as they applied to students' enduring mood responses.

Attributional styles and life events in the classroom: vulnerability and invulnerability to depressive mood reactions.

A core prediction of the reformulated model of learned helplessness and depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) is that when confronted with the same negative life event, people who display a generalized tendency to attribute negative outcomes to internal, stable, or global factors should be more likely to experience a depressive mood reaction than people who typically attribute negative outcomes to external, unstable, or specific factors. We tested this prediction with a prospective design in a naturalistic setting by determining whether the content of college students' attributional styles at one point in time predicted the severity of their depressive mood response to receiving a low grade on a midterm exam at a subsequent point in time. Consistent with the prediction, students with an internal or global attributional style for negative outcomes at Time 1 experienced a depressive mood response when confronted with a subsequent low midterm grade, whereas students with an external or specific attributional style for negative outcomes were invulnerable to this depressive mood response. In contrast to the results for the internality and globality dimensions, students' scores along the stability attribution dimension were not correlated with the severity of their depressive mood response to the low midterm grade. In the absence of a negative life event (i.e., receipt of a high midterm grade), students' generalized tendencies to make internal or global attributions for negative outcomes at Time 1 were not significantly correlated with their subsequent changes in depressive mood although there was a nonsignificant positive correlation between severity of depressive mood response and the tendency to make global attributions for negative outcomes at Time 1.