THE EFFECT OF DYSPHORIA AND PUBLICNESS ON CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS

The experiment investigated dysphoric and nondepressed people's public and private attributions for success and failure, Highly dysphoric, m oderately dysphoric, and nondepressed subjects received favorable or u nfavorable feedback on an ego-involving social perceptiveness test. Th ey made attributions to ability, effort, luck and task difficulty whil e expecting to keep their responses private or discuss them with the e xperimenter. Highly dysphoric subjects attributed failure more to luck than did the moderately dysphoric or the nondepressed Highly dysphori c subjects also rated the test as more accurately assessing their soci al perceptiveness than did moderately dysphoric or nondepressed subjec ts. These findings did not replicate those found in Sweeney, Anderson, and Bailey's (1986) meta-analysis of the literature on attributional style in depression. Furthermore, subjects receiving unfavorable feedb ack claimed that the task was more difficult and attributed their perf ormance more to luck in private than in public. These results replicat e Smith and Whitehead's (1988) findings and extend them to a dysphoric sample. Implications of these results are discussed