What is Optimistic Attributional Style 1. A pattern of attributions in which an individual tends to attribute negative events to external, variable, and specific causes.
What is your attributional style?
Your attributional style is the way you explain a negative event to yourself. The way you think about why a bad thing has happened to you. The conclusions you draw from a negative event: the meaning you attribute to it.
What is a pessimistic attributional style?
A pessimistic attributional style advocates an inclination towards writing off positive events as external, stable and specific, in other words, the good things that happen are due to some external factor that won’t have longevity.
What is optimistic explanation style?
Optimistic explanatory style The way you mentally explain the things that happen to you is at the heart of optimism. Optimists explain positive events in terms of personal, permanent causes and negative events in terms of external, temporary causes.
What is an example of attributional writing?
The conclusions you draw from a negative event: the meaning you attribute to it. For example, say you fail a maths test at school. If you have a positive attributional style you might say something like: “This was an unusually hard test.
What are the benefits of an optimistic attributional style?
Using an optimistic explanatory style is also associated with increased productivity and better job retention (Seligman & Schulman, 1986; see Schulman 1995 for a discussion). Improved academic performance is positively associated with an optimistic explanatory style (LaForge & Cantrell, 2003).
What are the types of attribution styles?
When people experience positive or negative events, they often wonder why the event occurred. In order to answer this question, people make causal attributions based upon three basic dimensions: internal-external, stable-unstable, and global-specific.
What is the difference between an optimistic and pessimistic explanatory style?
If a pleasing event is experienced an optimist would exhibit an internal, stable and global explanatory style, whereas a pessimist would be showing external, unstable and specific explanatory style.
What is pessimistic explanatory style?
People who generally tend to blame themselves for negative events, believe that such events will continue indefinitely, and let such events affect many aspects of their lives display what is called a pessimistic explanatory style.
What are the three types of attributions?
Attributions are classified along three causal dimensions: locus of control, stability, and controllability. The locus of control dimension has two poles: internal versus external locus of control. The stability dimension captures whether causes change over time or not.
What are the two types of attributions?
There are basically two types of attributions: internal and external, or personal and situational. Either the person is in control of his/her behavior, or the situation is exerting influence upon him/her, to shape his/her behavior.
What is a negative attributional style?
You have a negative attributional style if you think a negative event has happened to you because of something inside you. Something internal. For example, “I failed the maths test because I am no good at maths”. (Thinking you're no good at maths is an internal reason to explain the failure.)
What are the three pillars of positive psychology?
The Three Pillars: Positive Psychology has three central concerns: positive experiences, positive individual traits, and positive institutions.
How do optimists explain troubles?
As you may have guessed, optimists tend to have more positive explanatory styles—ones that minimize stressful situations as unstable, local, and external and take credit for positive experiences as being more stable, global, and internal.
What is depressive attributional style?
A chronic style of attributing failures to internal, stable, and global causes, sometimes labeled as the 'depressive attributional style' is characteristic of depression-prone people (Seligman, 2002).
Which is the best example of a depressive explanatory style?
a negative, pessimistic, depressive explanatory style attributes failure to stable, global, and internal causes. "It's going to last forever," "It's going to affect everything I do," and "It's all my fault."
What is pessimistic thinking?
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines pessimism as "the attitude that things will go wrong and that people's wishes or aims are unlikely to be fulfilled."1. Pessimism is not a trait most people aspire to. It's associated with negativity, a "glass half-full" attitude, depression, and other mood disorders.
What is attribution style in decision making?
Attributional style or explanatory style is a cognitive personal feature reflecting a. standard specific way of explaining the reasons of events in which people are involved. This. concept is key in M. Seligman's theory of learned helplessness and depression.
What is an example of attribution?
Example: Maria's car breaks down on the freeway. If she believes the breakdown happened because of her ignorance about cars, she is making an internal attribution. If she believes that the breakdown happened because her car is old, she is making an external attribution.
What are attributions in social psychology?
In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. In real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences.
What are Attributional and explanatory styles in psychology?
In terms of positive outcomes, an individual with a tendency towards an optimistic explanatory style may attribute a positive outcome to a permanent factor while a pessimistic explanatory style would view the positive outcome as the result of transient, 'one-off', factors.
Attribution
Attribution refers to the way of describing the cause of an event or behavior.
Attribution Style
Attribution style can be defined as how an individual describes or justifies a negative event.
Signs of Negative Attributional Style
If a person has a negative attribution style when he will come across any event he will explain the event in a way that it will look like, internal, global and stable.
Types of Attribution
Researchers have done a two dimensional classification of Attribution.
Attribution Theory
This theory focuses on how ordinary people tend to infer and explain the causes of an event.
Jones and Davis Correspondent Inference Theory
In 1965, Jones and Davis put forward an idea that an individual tends to pay more attention to his intentional behaviour as compared to his unintentional behaviour.
Attribution Theory (B. Weiner)
In 1974, Weiner developed a theory which has gained enormous attention in social psychology.
Abstract
Background. The construct of attributional style refers to the specific ways people explain events, both positive and negative. Previous research has shown that optimistic attributional style (OAS) for negative events was reliably associated with low rates of depression.
Introduction
The notion of attributional (or explanatory) style is a key concept of reformulated learned helplessness theory (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) and its later version, the theory of hopelessness (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989).
Methods
The participants were 271 adults from Moscow and the Moscow Region, of whom 41% were university students and 59% were employees working in the public and private sectors. The sample comprised 238 (88%) women and 33 (12%) men; M age = 32.42, SD = 12.9, age range 18 – 78 years.
Results
The correlations among the study variables presented in Table 1 showed that subjective happiness was related to all other measures, including both indicators of OAS, and all indicators of savoring, dispositional optimism, self-esteem, and gratitude. Life satisfaction was correlated with all measured variables with the exception of OAS-Negative.
Discussion
DeNeve and Cooper (1998) hypothesized that “perhaps what is most critical to subjective well-being is not simply the tendency to experience positive or negative emotion, but the tendency to make either positive or negative attributions” (p. 219).
Conclusion
Our results point to the conclusion that the ability to explain good events optimistically is unrelated to the ability to optimistically explain bad events, and that it’s the former that’s essential for individuals’ positive functioning and well-being.
Limitations
This study had some limitations, the most significant of which was associated with its cross-sectional nature. Despite the path model we presented, we are aware that the study's cross-sectional design did not allow us to assess causality.
Introduction
- Optimistic Attributional Style for Negative and Positive Events
The notion of attributional (or explanatory) style is a key concept of reformulated learned helplessness theory (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) and its later version, the theory of hopelessness (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989). Attributional style is a cognitive personality v… - Looking for Personality Mediators of OAS-Positive and SWB
Our study focused on two well-known candidates for personality mediators – dispositional optimism and self-esteem – and two relatively new positive personality variables – gratitude and savoring – all of which imply noticing and valuing positive events. We hypothesized that these f…
Methods
- Participants
The participants were 271 adults from Moscow and the Moscow Region, of whom 41% were university students and 59% were employees working in the public and private sectors. The sample comprised 238 (88%) women and 33 (12%) men; M age = 32.42, SD = 12.9, age range 1… - Measures
To measure optimistic attributional style as a stable trait and a possible predictor of subjective well-being, we used a modified version of the Attributional Style Questionnaire (Peterson et al., 1982), which featured 10 achievement situations (five positive and five negative) (Gordeeva et al…
Results
- The correlations among the study variables presented in Table 1 showed that subjective happiness was related to all other measures, including both indicators of OAS, and all indicators of savoring, dispositional optimism, self-esteem, and gratitude. Life satisfaction was correlated with all measured variables with the exception of OAS-Negative. An OAS-Positive also demonstr…
Discussion
- DeNeve and Cooper (1998) hypothesized that“perhaps what is most critical to subjective well-being is not simply thetendency to experience positive or negative emotion, but the tendency to makeeither positive or negative attributions” (p. 219). From this standpoint, ourstudy sought to investigate a cognitive mediation model, in which selected positivepersonality traits were expect…
Conclusion
- Ourresults point to the conclusion that the ability to explain good eventsoptimistically is unrelated to the ability to optimistically explain bad events,and that it’s the former that’s essential for individuals’ positive functioningand well-being. The cultivation of optimistic thinking promotes gratitude, astrategy that essentially involves appreciative positive attention, andsavoring the mo…
Limitations
- This study had some limitations, the mostsignificant of which was associated with its cross-sectional nature. Despitethe path model we presented, we are aware that the study's cross-sectionaldesign did not allow us to assess causality. It is alsoimportant to note the limitation due to the sample not being balanced by sex, since the vast majority of participants werefemale (88…
Ethicsstatement
- All studyparticipants gave an informed consent to participate in this study and wereinformed about its purpose. The participants were volunteers and did notreceive any material rewards for their participation.
Author Contributions
- V.A.T.G. and T.O.G. conceived of the idea. V.A.T.G. performed the datacollection. T.O.G. developed the theory. O.A.S. and V.A.T.G. performed thecomputations. O.A.S. verified the analytical methods. Draft preparation wasdone by V.A.T.G. All authors participated in writing, discussed the results andcontributed to the final manuscript.
References
- Abramson, L.Y., Metalsky, G.I.,& Alloy, L.B. (1989). Hopelessness depression: A theory-based subtype ofdepression. Psychological Review, 96(2), 358–372.https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.2.358 Abramson, L.Y., Seligman, M.E.P.,& Teasdale, J.D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans. Journal ofAbnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.87.1…