Is pessimism a risk factor for depressive mood among community-dwelling older adults?

This study examined two senses in which pessimism might be a risk factor for depressive mood among older adults. The first was that a pessimistic explanatory style would predict changes toward depressive mood when combined with stressful life events. The second was that predictive pessimism, or thinking that bad events will happen in the future, would predict changes in depressive symptoms. We found an interaction between explanatory style and life stressors, but it was the optimists who were at higher risk for depressive symptoms after negative life events. We also found support for predictive pessimism, however, as a predictor of depressive symptoms over time.

Attributional style and life events: a diathesis-stress theory of alcohol consumption.

The role of a cognitive diathesis-stress model in predicting changes in alcohol consumption was examined. This study evaluated the interaction of attributional style with negative life events in predicting changes in beer, wine, spirits, and overall alcohol consumption. 93 undergraduate participants completed the Khavari Alcohol Test, Negative Life Events Questionnaire, and Attributional Style Questionnaire. The interaction of attributional style with negative life events predicted increases in spirits consumption between Time 1 and Time 2.

Positive psychology. An introduction.

A science of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions promises to improve quality of life and prevent the pathologies that arise when life is barren and meaningless. The exclusive focus on pathology that has dominated so much of our discipline results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features that make life worth living. Hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, spirituality, responsibility, and perseverance are ignored or explained as transformations of more authentic negative impulses. The 15 articles in this millennial issue of the American Psychologist discuss such issues as what enables happiness, the effects of autonomy and self-regulation, how optimism and hope affect health, what constitutes wisdom, and how talent and creativity come to fruition. The authors outline a framework for a science of positive psychology, point to gaps in our knowledge, and predict that the next century will see a science and profession that will come to understand and build the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to flourish.

Footsteps on the road to a positive psychology.

We have argued that psychology as a field has been preoccupied with the negative side of life and has left us with a view of human qualities that is warped and one-sided. Psychology is literally 'half-baked'. We need to bake the other half now. It is time for us to become equally concerned with the qualities and experiences that make life most worthwhile. A balance is needed between work that strives to relieve damage and work that endeavors to build strength. This balance is beautifully exemplified by Jack Rachman's work over the past 40 years. As an astute and compassionate clinician and researcher, Jack developed and evaluated effective treatments for some of the most debilitating anxiety disorders. At the same time, he was impressed by the resiliency of his clients and the courage they exhibited daily. His observations and studies of courage have helped to launch a systematic science of human strengths. They are giant footsteps on the road to a positive psychology.

Law school performance predicted by explanatory style.

The explanatory styles of 387 law students were assessed prior to law school using the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). Longitudinal performance measures were collected throughout law school and related to each student's initial explanatory style. In contrast to studies with undergraduates, students who made stable, global, and internal attributions for negative events combined with the converse attributions for success (typically called pessimists) outperformed more optimistic students on measures of grade point averages and law journal success. We discuss the limitations of current attributional research methodologies and suggest the prudent and cautious perspective necessary for law or skill-based professions may account for our findings.

Science as an ally of practice.

Well-founded criticisms of the Consumer Reports (CR; 1995) study of psychotherapy include possible bias of the CR sample; limitations of self-report; and the limitations of cross-sectional, retrospective data. Poorly founded criticisms concern "consumer satisfaction" and the claim that the remarkably good effects of long-term therapy resulted from spontaneous remission, that psychotherapy effects were small, and that nondoctoral providers did as well as doctoral-level providers. Both the experimental method (efficacy) and the observational method with causal modeling (effectiveness) answer complementary questions, and they both do so by eliminating alternative possible causes. Efficacy studies, however, cannot test long-term psychotherapy because long-term manuals cannot be written and patients cannot be randomized into two-year-long placebo controls, so the "empirical validation" of long-term therapy will likely come from effectiveness studies. Such studies of long-term therapy, of qualifications of providers, and of clinical judgment versus case management are urgently needed as practice confronts managed care.

Cerebral blood flow changes in limbic regions induced by unsolvable anagram tasks.

OBJECTIVE: The study addressed the question of whether unsolvable as opposed to solvable cognitive problems activate discrete neuronal systems in the human brain. METHOD: Twelve healthy humans tried to solve unsolvable anagrams. Solvable anagrams and a resting baseline after each anagram task served as control conditions in a within-subject design. Activation was measured with the equilibrium infusion method by using 15O-labeled water and positron emission tomography, with absolute quantitation of anatomically defined regional cerebral blood flow (CBF). RESULTS: Compared to rest, both anagram tasks increased activity in frontal and temporal regions. The soluble task condition increased hippocampal activation and decreased mammillary bodies activity, while unsolvable anagrams were associated with increased CBF to the mamillary bodies and amygdala and decreased hippocampal activity. CONCLUSIONS: A limbic network integrating negative emotion and cognition seems reflected in reciprocal diencephalic and limbic activation with solvable and unsolvable anagrams. Since unsolvable anagrams have been used to induce learned helplessness in humans, this finding may provide an initial step toward clarifying its neural substrate.

The effectiveness of psychotherapy. The Consumer Reports study.

Consumer Reports (1995, November) published an article which concluded that patients benefited very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder; psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse. The methodological virtues and drawbacks of this large-scale survey are examined and contrasted with the more traditional efficacy study, in which patients are randomized into a manualized, fixed duration treatment or into control groups. I conclude that the Consumer Reports survey complements the efficacy method, and that the best features of these two methods can be combined into a more ideal method that will best provide empirical validation of psychotherapy.

Prevention of depressive symptoms in school children.

This paper describes the development and preliminary efficacy of a program designed to prevent depressive symptoms in at-risk 10-13 year-olds, and relates the findings to the current understanding of childhood depression. The treatment targets depressive symptoms and related difficulties such as conduct problems, low academic achievement, low social competence, and poor peer relations, by proactively teaching cognitive techniques. Children were identified as 'at-risk' based on depressive symptoms and their reports of parental conflict. Sixty-nine children participated in treatment groups and were compared to 73 children in control groups. Depressive symptoms were significantly reduced and classroom behavior was significantly improved in the treatment group as compared to controls at post-test. Six-month follow-up showed continued reduction in depressive symptoms, as well as significantly fewer externalizing conduct problems, as compared to controls. The reduction in symptoms was most pronounced in the children who were most at risk.

CAVEing the MMPI for an Optimism-Pessimism Scale: Seligman's attributional model and the assessment of explanatory style.

Research based on Seligman's model indicates that a pessimistic explanatory style predicts increased frequency of depression, poorer physical health, and lower levels of achievement. The data show that persons who have a pessimistic outlook on life are more frequent users of the medical and mental health care delivery systems. This paper describes the development of a bipolar MMPI Optimism-Pessimism (PSM) scale that is based on the results of a technique--Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE)--applied to the MMPI. Reliability and validity indices show that the PSM scale is highly accurate and consistent with Seligman's theory. Identification of the patient's explanatory style may lead to improved management because intervention measures can be directed more accurately according to the patient's personality style. The new scale also will allow researchers to use existing MMPI data to explore relationships between explanatory style and various outcome variables and behavioral correlates.

Is optimism heritable? A study of twins.

Is optimism heritable? We gave the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), a measure of optimism, to 115 monozygotic twin pairs (MZ) and 27 dizygotic twin pairs (DZ). The intraclass correlations of the ASQ scores were 0.48 for MZ twins (P < 0.0001) and 0 for DZ twins. Though the sample size of DZ twins is small, these results suggest that there may be a substantial genetic effect on optimism. We speculate, however, that the mechanism for the transmission of this, and other complex personality traits, may be highly indirect.

Predictors and consequences of childhood depressive symptoms: a 5-year longitudinal study.

A 5-year longitudinal study investigated the interrelationships among children's experiences of depressive symptoms, negative life events, explanatory style, and helplessness behaviors in social and achievement situations. The results revealed that early in childhood, negative events, but not explanatory style, predicted depressive symptoms; later in childhood, a pessimistic explanatory style emerged as a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, alone and in conjunction with negative events. When children suffered periods of depression, their explanatory styles not only deteriorated but remained pessimistic even after their depression subsided, presumably putting them at risk for future episodes of depression. Some children seem repeatedly prone to depressive symptoms over periods of at least 2 years. Depressed children consistently showed helpless behaviors in social and achievement settings.

Explanatory style and cell-mediated immunity in elderly men and women.

Correlated pessimistic explanatory style--the belief that negative events are caused by internal, stable, and global factors--with lowered immunocompetence in a sample of 26 older adults. Two measures of cell-mediated immunity--T-helper cell/T-suppressor cell ratio and T-lymphocyte response to mitogen challenge--were lower in individuals with a pessimistic style, controlling for the influence of current health, depression, medication, recent weight change, sleep, and alcohol use. A relative increase in the percentage of T-suppressor cells seemed to underlie this immunosuppression. Although the mechanism by which explanatory style might influence immune function remains unknown, we speculate that a pessimistic style might be an important psychological risk factor--at least among older people--in the early course of certain immune-mediated diseases.

Sex differences in depression and explanatory style in children.

We report data from the first two years of a longitudinal study of depression, and explanatory style in children. Measures of these variables have been obtained from a group of elementary school children every six months since they were in the third grade. Results show that the boys consistently reported more depressive symptoms than the girls. This was particularly true for symptoms of anhedonia and behavioral disturbance. The boys also showed much more maladaptive explanatory styles than the girls. These results are discussed in light of previous studies of sex differences in children's attributions. Possible reasons for the expected switch in the sex differences in puberty are also discussed.

Self-serving biases in causal attributions as a function of altered activation asymmetry.

The method of induced lateral orientation of attention was selectively used to alter the balance of activation of the brain toward one cerebral hemisphere or the other. The goal was to extend earlier research which showed greater personal optimism for future events during left hemisphere activation to the related phenomenon of causal attributions. As predicted, there was significantly greater self-serving bias (attribution of internal, stable, and global causes for positive events and external, unstable, and specific causes for negative events) during left hemisphere than during right hemisphere relative activation. This was true for achievement but not for affiliation events. These effects were explained in terms of the increased positive affect which correlates with greater left hemisphere activation. Selective activation of the left hemisphere as a means temporarily to alter attributional style was discussed as a possible tool in the treatment of learned helplessness and depression.

Explanatory style across the life span: evidence for stability over 52 years.

Analyzed explanatory style across the life span. 30 Ss whose average age was 72 responded to questions about their current life and provided diaries or letters written in their youth, an average of 52 years earlier. A blind content analysis of explanatory style derived from these 2 sources revealed that explanatory style for negative events was stable throughout adult life (r = .54, p less than .002). In contrast, there appeared to be no stability of explanatory style for positive events between the same 2 time periods. These results suggest that explanatory style for negative events may persist across the life span and may constitute an enduring risk factor for depression, low achievement, and physical illness.

Assessing explanatory style: the content analysis of verbatim explanations and the Attributional Style Questionnaire.

We compare two methods of assessing explanatory style--the content analysis of verbatim explanations (CAVE) and the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). The CAVE technique is a method that allows the researcher to analyze any naturally occurring verbatim materials for explanatory style. This technique permits the measurement of various populations that are unwilling or unable to take the ASQ. We administered the ASQ and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to 169 undergraduates and content analyzed the written causes on the ASQ for explanatory style by the CAVE technique. The CAVE technique correlated 0.71 with the ASQ (P less than 0.0001, n = 159) and -0.36 with BDI (P less than 0.0001, n = 159). The ASQ correlated -0.51 with the BDI (P less than 0.0001, n = 160). Both the CAVE technique and the ASQ seem to be valid devices for assessing explanatory style.

Pessimistic explanatory style is a risk factor for physical illness: a thirty-five-year longitudinal study.

Explanatory style, the habitual ways in which individuals explain bad events, was extracted from open-ended questionnaires filled out by 99 graduates of the Harvard University classes of 1942-1944 at age 25. Physical health from ages 30 to 60 as measured by physician examination was related to earlier explanatory style. Pessimistic explanatory style (the belief that bad events are caused by stable, global, and internal factors) predicted poor health at ages 45 through 60, even when physical and mental health at age 25 were controlled. Pessimism in early adulthood appears to be a risk factor for poor health in middle and late adulthood.