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Biomedical subjects

J A Ralph

Publications and source records attributed to J A Ralph.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Attributional style and self-esteem: the prediction of emotional distress following a midterm exam.

A midterm design was used to determine whether students' attributional style for negative achievement events interacts with self-esteem and a lower-than-expected exam grade to predict changes in measures of specific and nonspecific depression and anxiety. Participants were 141 students who completed baseline measures of attributional style and self-esteem, as well as affective measures on several occasions before and after receipt of midterm grades. A pessimistic attributional style for negative events interacted with self-esteem and outcome to predict residual changes in a combined measure of nonspecific distress and anxious arousal (marginal trend) but not a combined measure of specific depressive symptoms. Unexpectedly, the greatest residual increases in distress occurred among low-self-esteem pessimists who experienced a nonfailure outcome. These effects did not appear to be mediated by changes in hopelessness.

Achievement↗
PubMed1997

Pessimistic attributional style: is it specific to depression versus anxiety versus negative affect?

Two studies with college students explored the relationship of a pessimistic attributional style to positive and negative affect, as well as to depressed and anxious mood. Both studies revealed that a pessimistic attributional style was correlated with negative affect and depressed mood, but was unrelated to low levels of positive affect. The second study also showed a correlation with anxiety and that the association of pessimistic attributional style with emotional distress occurs for both depression-relevant (i.e. loss/failure) as well as anxiety-relevant (i.e. threatening) events. The second study also provided a longitudinal test of the diathesis-stress component of the reformulated helplessness theory. Results supported the hypothesis that pessimistic attributional style is a nonspecific diathesis for symptoms of both anxiety and depression. Implications for these findings for cognitive theories of depression are addressed.

Adult↗