Metatraits and cognitive assessment: Application to attributional style and depressive symptoms

This research examined whether attributional style is more closely related to depressive symptoms for some people than for others. In Study 1, depressed patients voicing more explanations for negative events showed (nonsignificantly) higher correlations between attributional style and depressive symptoms. In Study 2, subjects reporting a tendency to ruminate about the causes of events showed stronger relations between attributional style and depressive symptoms. Conversely, subjectslow in attributional complexity exhibited stronger relations of depressive symptoms with positive-event attributional style. We speculated that by asking for ratings of only the single most important cause of events attributional style measures might provide a less adequate sample of the causal thinking of attributionally complex subjects. Study 3 partially supported this reasoning; attributional complexity was not significantly correlated with seeing events as having multiple causes, but it was associated with rating second-most-important causes as distinct from first causes on attributional dimensions. Thus, current attributional style measures and theories might be best-suited to subjects who (a) tend to ponder causes of events but (b) arrive at uniform conclusions about the nature of these causes.For assistance in conducting this research we are grateful to Christina Claffy, Jennifer Fine, Jennifer Hanlon, Mark Miller, Mark Nelson, Jennifer Poirier, Heather Quinn, Diana Roscow Terrill, and Sandra Thomsen. Parts of this research were supported by NIMH grant 1RO3MH47003-01A1 to the second author.