Lb. Alloy et al., ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE, DAILY-LIFE EVENTS, AND HOPELESSNESS DEPRESSION -SUBTYPE VALIDATION BY PROSPECTIVE VARIABILITY AND SPECIFICITY OF SYMPTOMS, Cognitive therapy and research, 21(3), 1997, pp. 321-344
We utilized a short-term, prospective, behavioral high-risk design wit
h a daily diary methodology for assessing daily life events and sympto
ms in order to examine whether attributional style and the attribution
al style x events interaction predicted level, within-day, and across-
days variability in the depressive disorder subtype, hopelessness depr
ession, but not other depression symptoms. Nondepressed participants a
t high or low risk for hopelessness depression symptoms based on their
attributional styles for positive and negative events provided daily
reports of their positive and negative life events and ratings of thei
r highest, lowest, and average point for the day on 20 symptoms of dep
ression vs, mania for 28 days. In accord with the hopelessness theory,
attributionally high-risk participants exhibited higher levels and gr
eater within-day variability and also tended to show greater across-da
ys variability of hopelessness depression symptoms, bur not other depr
ession symptoms, than attributionally low-risk participants. Across-da
ys variability of hopelessness depression symptoms was further predict
ed by the interaction of attributional style and total events (positiv
e + negative), whereas within-day variability was a function of the ma
in effects of attributional style and total events. Finally, as predic
ted, hopelessness depression symptoms intercorrelated with each other
more highly than they correlated with non-hopelessness depression symp
toms. The findings are discussed with respect to their implications fo
r the proposed hopelessness subtype of depression.