The mlidity and utility of the attributional style construct at a moderate level of specifuity. Unpublished manuscript

The validity aDd utility of attributional style bas been questioned in recent years. Major criticisms are that attributional style is not cross-sitUationally consistent, is not measured appfq)riately, bas little construc:t validity, aDd contributes little to the prediction of important social behaviors. This article examines these issues with data primarily related to the SCYera1different attributional style measures found in ADdenOD's Attributional Style,. T1 1r.~t Tests. We examined previously pub-lisbed aDd new data. The results show evidenc:c of c:oD~t and discriminant validity for attribu. tional styles aS8eSIIedat an intermediate leYel of specificity. Aba, attributional style effects were as as parallel attribution manipulatioos in complex social settinp. We concluded that both the extreme po-imian of some recent researcben aDd the broad, sweepinaly optimistic claims of some prcpol1eDts are unwarranted, and that further work on spec:ityina the appropriate leYel of assessment for attributional stylewould be useful. The pervasiveness of depression and related clinical prob-lems,alongwith recenttheoreticaladvancesinattributionthe-ory, have prompted a myriad of researchers to investigate attri-butional models of these "problems in living " (e.g., Anderson &amp