Attributional asymmetries in relation to dysphoria and self-esteem

Abstract

High self-esteem individuals and non-depressive persons are characterized by a self-serving attributional bias—the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to relatively internal, stable and global aspects and negative outcomes to relatively external, unstable and specific aspects. It has been reported that depressive individuals exhibit an ‘even-handed’ attributional style in which attributions to internal-external, stable-unstable and global-specific dimensions are the same for positive and negative outcomes. We consider the possibility that depressed persons and low self-esteem persons exhibit a counterself-serving bias in which positive outcomes are related to external, unstable and specific factors while negative outcomes are attributed to internal, stable and global aspects. Two hundred respondents completed the Dutch Attributional Style Questionnaire, three dysphoria scales and a self-esteem measure. Low dysphoria individuals and high self-esteem individuals exhibited positive attributional bias. High dysphoria individuals and low self-esteem individuals exhibited negative attributional bias and not ‘even-handedness’. Most of the variance that dysphoria has in common with attributional bias can be accounted for by self-esteem. Self-esteem, in contrast, shows some uniqueness relative to dysphoria in its relationship to attributional bias.