Depression, psychopathology, and self-serving attributions.
Depressed and non-depressed psychiatric in-patients and non-depressed non-psychiatric controls classified their performance on a verbal recognition task as either a success or a failure, and made attributions about the causes of their perceived success or failure. In all three groups, subjects who classified their performance as a success attributed their outcome more to internal and less to external factors than did subjects who classified their performance as a failure. These results suggest that depression and attributional style may not necessarily be related. Discussion centres on the idea that individuals' expectations of success can affect their subsequent attributions.
D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005246:Feedback; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007600:Judgment