Dependency, self-criticism and attributional style: a reexamination

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Personality Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) measures dependency and self-criticism.
• The Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire (EASQ) assesses attributions for hypothetical outcomes.
• Previous research has explored the link between personality dimensions and attributional styles.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the relationship between dependency and self-criticism personality dimensions and attributions to affiliative and achievement domains.
• To determine if self-criticism and dependency differentially predict attributional styles.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) to measure personality dimensions.
• Employed the Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire (EASQ) to assess attributional styles.
• Correlational analysis was performed to examine the relationships between variables.

Main Results:

• Dependency did not show a significant correlation with either affiliative or achievement attributional domains.
• Self-criticism demonstrated a significant correlation with both affiliative and achievement attributional domains.
• No evidence of differential causal assignment was found across attributional dimensions, replicating prior findings.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the idea that self-criticism is associated with specific attributional patterns related to social and performance domains.
• The lack of correlation between dependency and these domains suggests a more complex relationship than previously assumed.
• These results contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding the independence of the personality constructs measured by the DEQ.