Attributional, life-event, and affective predictors of onset of depression, anxiety, and negative attributional style

This investigation examined (1) the extent to which negative attributional style and life events predict the development of depression and anxiety, and (2) the extent to which measures of life events, depression, and anxiety predict the development of negative attributional style. Sets of questionnaires, including the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Stimulus-Response Inventory of General Trait Anxiousness (SR-GTA), and the Life Experiences Survey (LES), were administered to 80 undergraduate students on two occasions separated by a 1-month interval, between midterm and final examination periods of an academic semester. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that (1) composite negative attributional style predicted the onset of anxiety, measured by the MAACL anxiety scale, and (2) depression, measured by the MAACL depression scale, and low amounts of desirable life events each predicted the onset of composite negative attributional style.