| dc.description.abstract | The present study examined a number of relevant
underlying cognitions of depression, within the context
of learned helplessness theory, and more specifically,
reformulated learned helplessness theory. Previous
research has found mixed support for the possibility
that locus of control, moderates the effects of life
stress on depression. Externality is theoretically
linked to helplessness and in order to elucidate the
role of controllability in depression, the Levenson IPC
scales (Levenson, 1974) were employed in the present
study. The attributional reformulation of learned
helplessness theory proposes that depressives
make more attributions to internal, stable, global
causal factors over negative events than do
non-depressives. In addition to an assessment of
maladaptive attributional style, Harvey (1981) included
a controllable - uncontrollable dimension of causes in
his questionnaire and found that depressives also made
attributions to controllable causes. This finding,
using student subjects, minimized the central importance of helplessness as related to depression.
The present study attempted to test the above
findings. Subjects included 126 college students and
26 out-patient counselling subjects. Each was given a
Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, 1967), the Levenson
IPC scales (Levenson, 1974), a Life Events Inventory
(Cochrane and Robertson, 1973), and an Attribution
Style Questionnaire (Hammon & Mayol, 1982). A multiple
classification of analyses of variance revealed that
male out-patients make attributions to internal,
stable, global factors; while female out-patients, the
highest scoring BDI group, made attributions to
external, stable, global factors. There was partial
support for the maladaptive attributional style, but
several questions and issues were raised. In contrast
to the findings of Harvey (1981), females whether
depressed or not, attributed the cause of stressful
events to external factors. Finally, a series of
step-wise multiple regression analyses were conducted
on the data to examine the relative contribution of the
attributions generated from the Attribution Style
Questionnaire and the three locus of control scales. Results reveal the Uncertainty, Powerful other and
Chance scales are the best overall predictors of
depression. The above findings lend support to the
learned helplessness model of depression rather than a
negative self-attitude model (Beck, 1967). | |
