Explanatory style of schizophrenic and depressed outpatients

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 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.