Causal Attribution and Depression: A Friendly Refinement Based on Philippine Data

In a study using American college students, Seligman, Abramson, Semmell, and Baeyer (1979) found support for the learned helplessness model of depression. A replication with Filipino college students points to the possible confounding influence of overall attributional style. Restated in such a way as to isolate and remove this confounding factor, the learned helplessness model is supported by the Philippine data, and the model holds for affective and somatic as well as psychological symptoms. We applied the restated model to a new sample of American college students and found results consistent with those in the Seligman study. However, the predictability of the model for our American sample extends to affective and psychological, but not somatic, symptoms of depression.