ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE - A MEDIATOR OF THE SHYNESS DEPRESSION RELATIONSHIP

We propose that the relationship between shyness and depression is med iated by a negative attributional style. To test this, we compared att ributional style and level of depression for shy versus non-shy colleg e students. We also examined the relationship between shyness and depr ession with attributional style held constant. In support of our conce ptualization, shy students were more depressed and had a more negative attributional style than non-shy students. Further, as predicted by t he mediation hypothesis, there was no difference between the shy and n on-shy groups in depression when the effect of attributional style was removed. We discuss the implications of our findings for future work on cognitive aspects of shyness. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.