Attributional style, negative life events, and the origin and maintenance of hopelessness expectancies

The Hopelessness Theory of Depression (Abramson, Metalsky & Alloy, 1989) proposes that a negative style of thinking, termed “depressogenic attributional style”, is a stable vulnerability factor for depression. While a few studies have directly tested this theory, none have tested if, as the previous Learned Helplessness Reformulated Theory posits, the stability and globality dimensions of the attributional style influence the maintenance of uncontrollability expectancies, named hopelessness by Abramson et al. (1989). Specifically, does this quality of attributional style explain, as the previous theory posits, not the origin but the maintenance of hopelessness expectancies? In the first study, the regression analyses indicated that negative life events suffered by the subjects, but neither Generality dimension of attributional style for negative events nor interaction, did predict the hopelessness expectancies. To examine in a second longitudinal study whether the maintenance of hopelessness over time depends on the Generality of the attributional style, only those subjects with scores indicating high hopelessness were chosen; a mixed analysis of variance was made with the hopelessness scores as the dependent repeated measures variable (T1 vs. T2); the Generality dimension of attributional style condition (low vs. high) was the between-subjects variable. With negative life events scores as a significant covariate, analysis revealed that none of the main effects showed statistical significance. Interestingly, the interaction term predicted enduring hopelessness reactions only for subjects with high Generality scores on attributional style.