Skip to main content
Log in

Explanatory style of schizophrenic and depressed outpatients

  • Published:
Cognitive Therapy and Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We administered an Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) to several outpatient groups—paranoid schizophrenics (n =32), nonparanoid schizophrenics (n =30), and depressives (n =30)—as well as to a normal comparison group of community college students (n =30). Depressives evidenced a more pessimistic explanatory style than paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics and normals. Six months later, among those outpatients experiencing hassles, individuals who attributed good events to stable, global, and internal causes were functioning somewhat better than those who attributed good events to unstable, specific, and external causes. We operationalized explanatory “flexibility” as the range of scores on the ASQ and found that outpatients with larger range scores for bad events (presumably showing more flexibility) functioned better than those having smaller range scores.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I., & Alloy, L. B. (1988). The hopelessness theory of depression: Does the research test the theory? In L. Y. Abramson (Ed.),Social cognition and clinical psychology: A synthesis (pp. 33–65). New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87 49–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association (1980).Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, C. A. (1980).Motivational and performance deficits as a function of attributional style. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.

  • Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F., & Emery, G. (1979).Cognitive therapy of depression. New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, A. T., Ward, C. H., Mendelson, M., Mock, J., & Erbaugh, J. (1961). An inventory for measuring depression.Archives of General Psychiatry, 4 561–571.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests.Psychometrika, 16 297–334.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, A. (1973).Humanistic psychotherapy: The rational-emotive approach. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Endicott, J., Spitzer, R. L., Fleiss, J. L., & Cohen, J. (1976). The Global Assessment Scale: A procedure for measuring overall severity of psychological disturbance.Archives of General Psychiatry, 33 766–771.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. H. (1967). The social readjustment rating scale.Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11 213–218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horney, K. (1937).The neurotic personality of our time. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jastak, J. F., & Jastak, S. R. (1964). Short forms of the WAIS and WISC vocabulary subtests.Journal of Clinical Psychology, 20 167–199.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kanner, A. D., Coyne, J., Schaefer, C., & Lazarus, R. S. (1981). Comparison of two models of stress measurement: Daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events.Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4 1–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kogan, N., & Wallach, M. A. (1964).Risk taking. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lazarus, R. (1981). The stress and coping paradigm. In C. Eisdorfer (Ed.),Models for clinical psychopathology (pp. 177–217). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magaro, P. A., Abrams, L., & Cantrell, P. (1981). The Maine Scale for Paranoid and Nonparanoid Schizophrenia: Reliability and validity.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49 438–447.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maser, J. D., & Cloninger, C. R. (Eds.) (1990).Comorbidity of mood and anxiety disorders. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meichenbaum, D. (1985).Stress innoculation training. New York: Pergamon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Millon, T. (1981).Disorders of personality. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moos, R. (1967). Differential effects of ward settings on psychiatric patients.Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 145 272–283.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moos, R. (1968). Situational analysis of a therapeutic community milieu.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 73 49–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Needles, D. J., & Abramson, L. Y. (1990). Positive life events, attributional style, and hopefulness: Testing a model of recovery from depression.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 99 156–165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Patsiokas, A. T., Clum, G. A., & Luscomb, R. L. (1979). Cognitive characteristics of suicide attempters.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47 478–484.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, C. (1991). Meaning and measurement of explanatory style.Psychological Inquiry, 2 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, C., & Bossio, L. M. (1991).Health and optimism. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, C., Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1993).Learned helplessness: A theory for the age of personal control. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence.Psychological Review, 91 347–374.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, C., Semmel, A., von Baeyer, C., Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). The Attributional Style Questionnaire.Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6 287–299.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raps, C. S., Peterson, C., Reinhard, K. E., Abramson, L. Y., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). Attributional style among depressed patients.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 91 102–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, R., & Wright, E. W. (1975). Behavioral rigidity and its relationship to authoritarianism and obsessive-compulsiveness.Perceptual and Motor Skills, 40 802.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruderman, A. J. (1986). Bulimia and irrational beliefs.Behaviour Research and Therapy, 24 193–197.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seligman, M. E. P. (1975).Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco: Freeman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seligman, M. E. P. (1981). A learned helplessness point of view. In L. P Rehm (Ed.),Behavior therapy for depression: Present status and future directions (pp. 123–141). New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seligman, M. E. P. (1991).Learned optimism. New York: Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro, D. (1965).Neurotic styles. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sweeney, P. D., Anderson, K., & Bailey, S. (1986). Attributional style in depression: A meta-analytic review.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50 974–991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaillant, G. E. (1977).Adaptation to life. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vinoda, K. S. (1966). Personality characteristics of attempted suicides.British Journal of Psychiatry, 112 1143–1150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wortman, C. B., & Dintzer, L. (1978). Is an attributional analysis of the learned helplessness phenomenon viable?: A critique of the Abramson-Seligman-Teasdale reformulation.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87 75–90.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

This article is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation, which was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.

Subjects were recruited from Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, the Veterans Administration Medical Center at Northport, and LaGuardia and Queensborough Community Colleges. We wish to thank the subjects who participated in this project and the staff members who assisted. We are also grateful to Irving Bernstein and Nathan Kogan for their help and support. We especially wish to express our appreciation to Debbie Bruno for her invaluable suggestions, assistance, and encouragement.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Silverman, R.J., Peterson, C. Explanatory style of schizophrenic and depressed outpatients. Cogn Ther Res 17, 457–470 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173057

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173057

Key words

Navigation