Dependency, self-criticism, and depressive attributional style

Area of Science:

• Clinical Psychology
• Psychopathology
• Cognitive Bias

Background:

• Depression is often conceptualized with distinct contributing factors.
• Dependency and self-criticism are proposed as independent facets of depression.
• Causal attributional style, particularly internality for negative events, is linked to depression.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if individuals with depression differ based on dependency versus self-criticism in their causal attributions for negative events.
• To examine the relationship between dependency, self-criticism, and the internality of attributions for negative events in a depressed sample.

Main Methods:

• Sixty psychiatric outpatients diagnosed with depression participated.
• Participants completed self-report measures including the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory, semantic differential, and Attributional Style Questionnaire.
• Correlational analyses were used to examine relationships between variables.

Main Results:

• Both dependency and self-criticism showed a significant positive correlation with the internality of causal attributions for negative events.
• Dependency and self-criticism were also positively correlated with each other.
• The findings did not support the idea that dependency and self-criticism represent specific, distinct subtypes of depression regarding attributional style.

Conclusions:

• Dependency and self-criticism in depression are not independent factors concerning causal attributions for negative events.
• Both traits are associated with a tendency to attribute negative events to internal causes.
• The study suggests a shared underlying mechanism related to attributional style for these two facets of depression.