Bulimic symptoms and the development of depressive symptoms: The moderating role of attributional style

Using a prospective design, we examined whether attributional style moderated the relationship between the presence of bulimic symptoms and subsequent increases in depressive symptoms. As predicted, the presence of bulimic symptoms in college females at one point in time (T1) was associated with increases in depressive symptoms from T1 to T2 (3 weeks after T1) for subjects who exhibited a negative attributional style, but not for subjects who exhibited a positive attributional style. Depressive symptoms at T1 were not associated with increases in bulimic symptoms from T1 to T2. Of importance to the hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989), the presence of bulimic symptoms alone did not predict onset of depressive symptoms; it was only when bulimic symptoms and the negative attributional style were combined that depressive symptoms emerged. The hypothesis that these effects would be mediated by hopelessness obtained marginal support, and effects were obtained for depressive and anhedonic symptoms but not for anxious symptoms. We discussed implications for future work, including the value of the hopelessness theory of depression in explaining the co-occurrence of depressive and bulimic symptoms.Preparation of this article was supported, in part, by a Young Investigator Award to Thomas Joiner from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (NARSAD); by a research grant to Thomas Joiner from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the funds of which derive from the Pearl and Aaron Forman Research Foundation and the John Sealy Memorial Endowment Fund; by a grant from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health to G. I. Metalsky; and by a Public Health Service Biomedical Research Support Grant (2 S07 RR05407-28) to S. A. Wonderlich.