Causal attributions and the learned helplessness model of depression

Includes bibliographical references (pages 38-40)College students were divided into depressed and\ud nondepressed groups by use of the Beck Depression Inventory.\ud Subjects completed a word association task and were\ud randomly assigned to conditions whereby they received\ud instructions which stressed that either the task has social\ud importance or it did not. All subjects were asked to role\ud play their task score and were assigned randomly to success\ud or failure feedback. The seven dependent variables,\ud measured on a post-experimental questionnaire, were:\ud internal and external attributions, stable and unstable\ud attributions; and pleased, satisfied and deserving of\ud score. Multivariate analysis of variance showed a significant\ud main effect for type of task feedback. Subjects\ud who were told that they had succeeded at the word \ud association task felt more "deserving" and "pleased" than\ud those subjects who received failure feedback. No main\ud effects for depression or social importance of task were\ud found, nor were any interactions significant. The results\ud were contradictory to those found in previous literature\ud on depression and attribution, and are discussed in terms\ud of problems in methodology and theoretical implications