Universal versus personal helplessness in depression: Belief in uncontrollability or incompetence?

Abstract

The learned helplessness model of depression predicts that depressed individuals believe outcomes are more response independent than do nondepressed individuals in a skill situation. The present study assessed whether depressives' cognitive distortions are specific to their belief about their own skilled action or are a result of a general belief in uncontrollabi lity in the world. Changes in expectancies following success and failure in skill and chance tasks were examined in 32 depressed and 32 nondepressed college students who either performed themselves or observed a confederate perform a pair of tasks. In the skill task, depressed subjects showed significantly smaller changes in expectancy than nondepressed subjects when estimating the probability of their own success. In contrast, depressed and nondepressed subjects did not differ when estimating the probability of another person's success on the identical skill task. We infer that depressed individuals view themselves as helpless in a skilled situation but do not view the situation itself as uncontrollable. The results are discussed in terms of the reformulated learned helplessness model.

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