Attributional style and life-events

Abstract

The study addressed the question of the significance of intervening life-events in linking attributional style and depression. Twenty male subjects who had experienced an uncontrollable event, job redundancy, were compared with 20 controls on measures of attributional style, depression and self-esteem. The reformulated helplessness hypothesis implies that attribution and depression should be correlated only after the uncontrollable event. This was found to be the case for internal--external dimension, providing tentative support for the reformulated helplessness model.