Attribution processes in distressed and nondistressed couples: 3. causal and responsibility attributions for spouse behavior

Causal and responsibility attributions for spouse behavior are examined in couples seeking therapy and in nondistressed community couples. Eighty spouses rated the causes of positive and negative partner behaviors, made attributions of responsibility for the behaviors, indicated their affective impact, and, finally, specified what they would do in response to each behavior. Distressed spouses saw the causes of negative partner behavior as more global and considered the behavior to be more negative in intent, selfishly motivated, and blameworthy than did nondistressed spouses. The inverse pattern of results was obtained for positive spouse behavior. Only responsibility attributions predicted the affective impact and intended responses to the behavior. These findings are discussed in terms of the role of attribution processes in martial dysfunction, and their implications for therapy are outlined.     

Attributional processes in distressed and nondistressed married couples

The present study compared the tendencies on the part of distressed and nondistressed couples to attribute their partners' positive and negative behavior to internal versus external factors. The prediction was that, compared to nondistressed spouses, distressed spouses would be inclined to attribute their partners' positive behavior to external factors, and their negative behavior to internal factors. Forty-nine nondistressed and 23 distressed couples were randomly assigned to one of two instructional manipulations, delivered to one spouse unbeknownst to the other. One set of instructions was to act positive during a subsequent conflict resolution interaction; the other was to act negative. Following the conflict resolution task, the uninstructed spouse was given the opportunity to explain his/her partner's behavior by completing a questionnaire consisting of a series of internal and external causal attributions. The findings supported the following hypothesis: Distressed couples were particularly likely to attribute their partners' negative behavior to internal factors; nondistressed couples, on the other hand, were particularly likely to attribute their partners' positive behavior to internal factors. Moreover, there was an overall tendency to favor internal attributions, regardless of distress level or valence of the behavior being interpreted. Discussion centered both on the implications of these findings and on directions for future research.This research was supported by grants from the Graduate School Research Fund at the University of Washington and by National Institute of Mental Health Grant No. 5 R01 MH 33838-02. Special thanks to the many research assistants who assisted us in various phases of this experiment: Dick Elwood, Jim Gilleland, Carolyn Phelps, Nicole Bussod, Victoria Follette, Christy Crose, George Nelson, B. J. McCrae, and Marianne DeGennaro. The authors would also like to thank Clifford Lunneborg for his valuable statistical consultation regarding the use of loglinear analysis.     

Attribution processes in distressed and nondistressed couples: 5. Real versus hypothetical events

The majority of studies on attribution in marriage have examined hypothetical behaviors, raising the possibility that results are not applicable to actual marital events. In addition, it is not known whether attribution biases found for partner versus self-behavior in distressed and nondistressed spouses occur for clinically relevant problem behaviors. To examine these issues, wives seeking marital therapy and nondistressed wives from the community made responsibility attributions for self- and partner behaviors identified as problematic for the relationship and for hypothetical behaviors used in past research. The pattern of responses obtained for distressed and nondistressed groups was not affected by the real or hypothetical nature of the behavior. In addition, attributions for problem-related and hypothetical behaviors predicted marital satisfaction equally well. In regard to attribution biases, distressed spouses saw their own behavior as more unselfishly motivated and unintentional than spouse behavior. Nondistressed spouses made equally benign attributions for both self- and partner behavior. The conceptual and clinical significance of the results are outlined.     

Marital adjustment following spinal cord injury

The present study examined marital characteristics of couples who are coping successfully with spinal cord injury (SCI) versus those who are not and the relationship of positive marital adjustment in SCI couples as compared with positive adjustment among able-bodied (AB) couples. In a 2 X 2 factorial design the marital relations of 10 nondistressed and 10 distressed SCI couples and 14 nondistressed and 10 distressed AB couples were examined. Assessments were conducted in the couples' homes and included self-report measures of recreational-social activities and sexual relations, and observations of marital communication skills. Multivariate analyses revealed significant interaction effect with posthoc comparisons, indicating that spouses in distressed SCI marriages engaged in significantly fewer activities alone and with their spouse and requested the greatest degree of change in the marital relationship in comparison with the other groups. There was a significant main effect for marital satisfaction, with distressed couples expressing more dissatisfaction in sexual relations and more negative communications during conflict resolution tasks. Although the results do not indicate that substantive differences exist in quantitative and qualitative aspects of marital relations between SCI and AB couples, several trends were observed which suggest the need for further research.     

The Mediating Effects of Attributional Style and Event-Specific Attributions on Postdisaster Adjustment

Attributional style and event-specific internal attributions were examined as cognitive mediators for the negative effect of disaster exposure on emotional adjustment following the Northridge earthquake. The positive relation between disaster exposure and emotional sequelae was found to be mediated by ascribing to a depressogenic attributional style in which negative outcomes were attributed to internal, stable, and global causes. Ascribing to a depressogenic attributional style did not mediate the relation between PTSD symptoms and disaster exposure, thus providing some support for an attributional-style-symptom-specific relation in the context of postdisaster adjustment.     

Multidimensional scaling of spouses' attributions for marital conflicts

Attributional dimensions for marital conflicts were derived using a multidimensional scaling of spouses' explanations for relationships problems. Four dimensions for husbands and four dimensions for wives were interpreted by using visual inspection and their relation to attributional dimensions drawn from the literature. Most of the dimensions reflected the locus of factors affecting relationship problems. However, the dimensions seemed to have additional meaning beyond the causal dimensions used in many past studies. Particularly noteworthy were dimensions (one for the husbands and one for the wives) that reflected attributions torelationship schism, or the “poor state of the relationship.” Additionally, one of the husbands' attributional dimensions reflected a denial of serious problems in the relationship. Initial evidence suggested that attributional dimensions in the present study were associated with marital distress. The results are interpreted in light of existing research, and the implications of the findings for future investigations are discussed.     

Self-responsibility and the self-serving bias: an fMRI investigation of causal attributions

We use causal attributions to infer the most likely cause of events in the social world. Internal attributions imply self-responsibility for events. The self-serving bias describes the tendency of normal subjects to attribute the causation of positive events internally ("I am responsible em leader ") and negative events externally ("Other people or situational factors are responsible em leader "). The self-serving bias has been assumed to serve a positive motivational function by enhancing self-esteem. Abnormalities of attributional style have been implicated in both depression and psychosis. We examined the neural basis of both self-responsibility and the self-serving bias using functional magnetic resonance imaging during the performance of attributional decision tasks. We found that the determination of self-responsibility recruits areas previously implicated in action simulation (bilateral premotor cortex and cerebellum), suggesting that such higher order social cognition is related to simpler internal models of goal-directed action. The dorsal striatum, previously implicated in motivated behavior, mediates the self-serving bias.     

Attributional Style,depression, and anxiety: An evaluation of the specificity of depressive attributions

The reformulated model of learned helplessness and depression postulates that depressed patients will attribute the causes of negative outcomes to internal, global, and stable factors. They may also make maladaptive attributions about the causes of positive outcomes. In the present study, the specificity of these attributional patterns to depressed patients was examined by comparing Attributional Style Questionnaire scores of samples of depressed patients (diagnosed as dysthymic disorder), anxiety disorder patients, and normals. Support for the reformulated model was evident for attributions of negative outcomes. Dysthymic patients demonstrated the hypothesized attributional pattern for negative outcomes, but anxiety patients did so only if they were also depressed. The attributions of dysthymic patients for positive outcomes did not differ from those of normal subjects, but several differences arose between the attributions for positive outcomes of highly depressed dysthymic patients and those of nondepressed anxious patients. Findings are compared to previous research, and implications of these results for the study of cognitive factors in anxiety disorders are discussed.Conduct of this study was supported by NIMH grants No. 38368 awarded to Richard G. Heimberg, No. 35999 awarded to Robert E. Becker, and No. 39096 awarded to David H. Barlow. Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Houston, November 1985. We wish to express our appreciation to Scott Schnee and David Gansler, who assisted in the data analysis.     

The Role of Perceptions and Attributions in Battered Women's Intentions to Permanently End Their Violent Relationships

The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the mediational role of attributions and emotional reactions to partner violence in the relationship between violence severity and frequency, and women's intentions to leave abusive relationships permanently. The results of separate regression analyses indicated that perceived increases in the frequency and severity of violence over time, but not absolute levels of violence, were significantly related to women's attributions for the violence, the severity of nervousness reported subsequent to a violent episode, and the intention to leave the abusive partner permanently. Attributions of partner causality and responsibility for violence were significantly related to nervous reactions and the intention to leave the abusive partner permanently. As predicted by the attributional model tested, the relationship between perceived increases in violence over time and the intention to leave the abusive partner permanently was completely mediated by the extent to which women explained or attributed the causes of the violence to the partner that were stable and global, and attributed blameworthiness, malicious intent, and selfish motivations to the partner for his use of violence.     

Preliminary Evidence for a Relationship Between Sleep Disturbance and Global Attributional Style in Depression

We hypothesized that a negative, stable, and global attributional style would mediate the relationship between sleep continuity and depression. Twenty-three currently depressed and 31 never-depressed participants completed the Attributional Styles Questionnaire and wore an actigraph during the course of 1 week. Linear and logistic regression techniques were used to calculate path coefficients to test the mediating relationship. Results indicated that a global attributional style mediated the relationship between poor sleep continuity (frequency of awakenings), delayed morning waketime, increased total time spent in bed, and depression. Reverse mediation analyses indicated that these relationships may be bidirectional. No effects were found for stable or internal attributions. These results suggest that global attributions may, in part, mediate the relationship between sleep disturbances and depression. They also provide data consistent with the hypothesis that disrupted sleep is associated with learned helplessness. Prospective studies are necessary to test the directionality of these relationships.     

The attributional Style Questionnaire

Of current interest are the causal attributions offered by depressives for the good and bad events in their lives. One important attributional account of depression is the reformulated learned helplessness model, which proposes that depressive symptoms are associated with an attributional style in which uncontrollable bad events are attributed to internal (versus external), stable (versus unstable), and global (versus specific) causes. We describe the Attributional Style Questionnaire, which measures individual differences in the use of these attributional dimensions. We report means, reliabilities, intercorrelations, and test-retest stabilities for a sample of 130 undergraduates. Evidence for the questionnaire's validity is discussed. The Attributional Style Questionnaire promises to be a reliable and valid instrument.This work was supported by PHS grant MH-19604 to M. Seligman, NSF grant BNS76-22943 to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant 463-80-0003 to C. von Baeyer. C. Peterson is now at Virgina Polytechnic Institute and State University. A Semmel is at the University of Texas, and L. Abramson and G. Metalsky are at the University of Wisconsin.     

Depression,attributional style,and failure generalization

This study provides evidence in support of recent extensions of the learned helplessness model of depression. Following hypothetical failure at an oral examination, depressed female university students reported more attributions than nondepressed students and attributed their failures more often to global, stable, and internal factors. In addition, depressed students decreased their expectancies of future success across a wider range of situations than did their nondepressed peers. Finally, presenting subjects with a variety of attributional alternatives for their failures was found to remedy the detrimental effect of failure on subsequent expectancies of success. This “therapeutic effect” was strongest among the depressed subjects, thus counteracting the usual failure generalization. Implications for the cognitive treatment of depression are discussed.     

Spouse Criticism/Hostility Toward Partners With Chronic Pain: The Role of Spouse Attributions for Patient Control Over Pain Behaviors

Spouse attributions regarding displays of pain behaviors by their partners with chronic pain may account for subsequent increases in spouse critical/hostile responses toward their partners. People with chronic low back pain (n?=?105) and their pain-free spouses (n?=?105) completed electronic diary measures 5 times per day for 14 consecutive days. Key items assessed spouse observations of patient pain behavior, attributions regarding these behaviors, and spouse critical/hostile responses toward patients. Results were 1) spouse observations of patient pain behavior at time 1 predicted high levels of spouse critical/hostile responses toward the patient at time 2. 2) “Internal” attributions (eg, the patient was attempting to influence spouse's feelings) at time 1 predicted high levels of spouse critical/hostile responses toward the patient at time 2. 3) Internal attributions mediated links between spouse-observed pain behaviors at time 1 and levels of spouse critical/hostile responses at time 2. Spouse observations of patient pain behavior was also related to an “external” attribution (ie, patient pain behavior was due to pain condition), but this attribution was not a significant mediator. A vital factor linking spouse scrutiny to spouse critical/hostile responses may be the spouse's ascribed reasons for the patient's grimacing, bracing, complaining, and so forth.Perspective: Results indicate that spouse internal and negative attributions for pain behaviors of their partners with chronic pain may influence subsequent spouse critical/hostile reactions to them. Findings suggest that replacing spouse internal and negative attributions with external, compassionate, and accepting explanations may be useful therapeutic targets for couples coping with chronic pain.     

Depression and attributional cognitions for hypothetical and stressful events in mental health center patients

Thirty nonpsychotic male mental health patients, of whom 15 were diagnosed as having depression according to the Research Diagnostic Criteria, completed three depression inventories and a questionnaire designed to assess attributions and other cognitions. Concern with causality, concern with avoidability, degree of upsetness, globality, the attributional composite, and uncertainty, were found to be positively associated with depression. In general, cognitive features correlated with depression similarly for hypothetical and for stressful events. The correlation between globality and depression was significant for stressful events but not for hypothetical events. Depression correlated significantly with degree of upsetness and concern with causality for hypothetical events but not for stressful events. Uncontrollability, intentionality, and prior expectation of an event's occurrence and recurrence were found not to be associated with depression. Also found to be unrelated to depression was the extent to which the question “What were the causes of this event” was reported to be important. The results for concern with causality and concern with avoidability are interpreted as manifestations of attributional activity, and suggest perhaps that extent of involvement with antecedents of negative outcome events is positively associated with depression. The results also support the hypothesis of a depressive composite attributional style and the hypothesis of greater uncertainty with depression. They confirm a lack of a difference between attributions for real versus hypothetical events.     

Attributional aspects of cognitive behavior modification: A theoretical approach and suggestions for techniques

Recent developments in the application of attributional models to motivational psychology were discussed and their relevance to questions of clinical psychology were examined. It is concluded that the area of cognitive behavior modification should incorporate attribution theory in its theoretical framework to enhance conceptual understanding and therapeutic efficacy concerning inappropriate emoting and maladaptive behaviors. Kelley's theory of attributional antecedents is presented and used to derive some clinical intervention strategies to change causal attributions when they are responsible for inappropriate emoting and/or maladaptive behaviors. Examples of misattributions are offered and a taxonomy for misattributions based on Weiner's dimensionalization is presented.     

Learned helplessness

1. Nurses described learned helplessness solely in terms of residents not performing the daily activities they were capable of. 2. The relatively strong correlation between the learned helplessness subscale of the MDI and the Beck Depression Inventory suggests that learned helplessness can be maladaptive and dysfunctional. 3. Analysis of attributional style found that personal, stable, and global attributions for negative events were closely associated with LH scores and self-reported depressive symptomatology in this sample. 4. Residents, except in the areas of meals and privacy, generally reported satisfaction with the amount of control they had in their treatment setting.     

Physiological and psychological responses induced by expressing empathy with others

Aim: To assess the physical and mental burdens associated with expressing empathy with another person's stress. Methods: Nine female subjects listened to their partner's negative emotions aroused by a stress task (Stroop color‐word test) under two conditions. In the first, the subject reacted empathetically to their partner (“with empathy”); in the second, the subject offered no response (control). Electroencephalograms and skin temperature of the second finger were recorded during the test. Subjective stress was estimated using a visual analog scale, whereas the level of cognition was expressed on a five‐point ranking. Responses during and after expressions of empathy were examined by comparisons with control or by correlation. Results: Sympathetic nerve tone increased under both conditions (i.e. the skin temperature of the second finger fell). Subjective stress was not recognized by the subject while listening “with empathy”, although it did increase significantly after the subject has listened “with empathy”. Subjective stress was not felt under the control conditions. Right temporal activity while listening showed a significantly positive correlation with the level of cognition of feeling the same emotion as the stressed partner, whereas bilateral frontal activity after listening was significantly negative correlated with the level of cognition of understanding the emotions of the stressed partner. Conclusion: Expressing empathy with another person's negative emotion led to increased physiological activity and subjective stress. Physiological responses to empathy depended on cognition of the different subjective factors. Cognition of sharing negative emotions activated the right temporal region of the brain, whereas cognition of understanding negative emotions inhibited bilateral frontal activities.     

A Prospective Test of the Hopelessness Theory of Depression in Adolescence

Depression increases sharply during adolescence. This study prospectively investigated etiological predictions from the hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989) among a sample of middle to late adolescents to examine whether this theory can be applied to this important age group. High school students completed measures of attributional style, hopelessness, negative stressors, general depressive symptoms, and specific hypothesized hopelessness depressive (HD) symptoms at two times separated by 5 weeks. Results showed that the attributional style × stress interaction predicted increases in depressive symptoms from T1 to T2. Gender moderated this interaction for the BDI such that the vulnerability–stress component held for boys, but not girls. Consistent with the vulnerability–stress component of the theory, these effects held for the increase in HD symptoms for both boys and girls, but not non-HD symptoms. Mediational analyses did not provide consistent support for hopelessness as a mediator of this association. These results were mostly the same whether the internal, stable, and global dimensions versus only the stable, global dimensions of attributional style were used to operationalize cognitive vulnerability. Overall, results suggest that the cognitive vulnerability–stress aspect of the hopelessness theory can be applied to middle to late adolescence.     

Relationship Beliefs,Attributions, and Partner Behaviors Among Depressed Married Women

Existing research documents that marital distress is strongly associated with depression; however, less is known about specific features of relationship functioning that are associated with depression. In the current study, we tested whether marital attributions, dysfunctional relationship beliefs, and partners reinforcing and aversive behavior were associated with major depression in married women. Compared to nondepressed wives, depressed wives reported stronger endorsement of several dysfunctional relationship beliefs, even when controlling for relationship distress. Depressed women also reported more dysfunctional relationship attributions and more negative partner behaviors; however, these results were not significant when marital distress was controlled. We also assessed relationship factors in husbands of depressed and nondepressed women. Husbands of depressed wives did not report significantly higher levels of dysfunctional attributions or beliefs. They did report more negative and fewer positive partner behaviors; however, husbands marital distress seemed to account for these findings. Results support an integration of cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal models of depression.