An investigation of attributional style in first-episode psychosis

The present study investigated covert and overt attributional styles in individuals experiencing a first episode of psychosis. It was hypothesized that those individuals experiencing paranoia, as operationalized by higher scores on the suspiciousness item of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) would perform differently on both covert and overt measures of attributional style when compared to those individuals who scored lower on the BPRS suspiciousness item.

A cross-sectional design was used. The sample consisted of 62 participants (50 males and 12 females) from the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre. The Pragmatic Inference Task (PIT) was used to measure covert attributional style, whereas the Attributional Style Questionnaire (parallel form; ASQpf) measured overt attributional style. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Questionnaire measured global self-esteem. Participants' positive, negative, and depressive symptoms were assessed by means of the BPRS, the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms, and the Beck Depression Inventory, respectively.

Regression analyses found that less suspiciousness (p = .02) and more depression (p = .02) predicted higher internal attributions for negative events scores on the ASQpf. There was a trend (p = .07) for more suspicious individuals to endorse the self-serving bias (SSB) on the PIT, even despite the SSB not being large enough to be considered defensive. Verbal IQ emerged as a significant predictor of covert attributional style (p = .04).

The findings suggest that increasing suspiciousness does predict attributional style in the early stages of psychosis, although the relationship appears weaker than in reports with more chronic psychotic patient samples. Longitudinal research is needed to ascertain whether attributional style is a stable characteristic in psychosis, or whether it fluctuates between periods of remission and active psychosis.