Fresco, D. M., Craighead, L. W., & Koons, A. N. (1996). A comparison of two techniques for measuring attributional style: How the ASQ and the CAVE relate to each other and to depression. Unpublished manuscript. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.
Seventy-eight undergraduates participated in an experiment called the "Students Life Events Study." The students attended two questionnaire sessions, separated by eight weeks, where they completed measures of attributional style, depression and life stress. The Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) requires subjects to provide attributions for hypothetical good and bad events. Between the two questionnaire sessions, students were asked to write essays about current good and bad events. The Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) technique was applied to the essays to obtain an alternate measure of attributional style. Analyses revealed that self-report measures of attributional style were uncorrelated with the CAVE-derived attributional style scores. Neither measure of attributional style was correlated with depression scores. When diathesis-stress terms consisting of either ASQ*life stress or CAVE*life stress were tested as predictors of depression, only the interaction term of CAVE*life stress reliably predicted depression scores. Findings from the present study suggest that attributions about hypothetical events may be different than attributions about current personal life events (CAVE). Findings from the present investigation failed to replicate previous studies that showed a greater congruency between scores for self-report measures of attributional style and CAVE-derived attributional style scores. The chief difference between previous work and the present study is that other investigators obtained CAVE scores about retrospective events rather than current events.
Peterson, C., Luborsky, L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1983). Attributions and depressive mood shifts: A case study using the symptom-context model. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 92, 96-103.
The prediction that depressive symptoms are preceded by internal, stable, and global attributions for bad events was tested during the psychotherapy sessions of a 22-yr-old male who showed strong mood swings. His attributions, scored by a new method that analyzes freely occurring causal statements for internality, stability, and globality, predicted mood swings as measured by the symptom-context method. Findings suggest that attributions can be assessed with predictive validity using verbatim transcripts of verbal material.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984) Content analysis of verbatim explanations: The CAVE technique for assessing explanatory style. Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Riskind, J. H., Castellon, C. S., & Beck, A. T. (1989). Spontaneous causal explanations in unipolar depression and generalized anxiety: Content analysis of dysfunctional-thought diaries. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 13, 97-108.
Compared spontaneous causal explanations of 12 clinically depressed patients for bad life events with those of 12 clinically anxious patients (all Ss aged 19-56 yrs). The spontaneous causal explanations of Ss were extracted from their own dysfunctional thought records, using the Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) technique. All diagnoses were based on consensus rule by 2 experienced clinicians using a structured diagnostic interview. Analyses found that unipolar major depression was associated with significantly higher CAVE scores for the attributional style described by the reformulated model of learned helplessness than was generalized anxiety disorder. Results imply that the attributional patterns assumed by the reformulated learned helplessness model may have relative specificity to depression.
Satterfield, J. M., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1994). Military aggression and risk predicted by explanatory style. Psychological Science, 5, 77-82.
Investigated the military actions of George Bush and Saddam Hussein using explanatory style scores derived from their utterances. Two historical periods of conflict were chosen for each leader. The Persian Gulf Crisis was used for both Bush and Hussein. The Iran-Iraq War period (1980-1988) was added for Hussein, and Operation Just Cause, the capture of Panamanian General Noriega, was included in the Bush analysis. These leaders' actions were rated on scales of aggression-passivity and risk-caution. Verbatim materials were gathered from the Ss' press conferences, interviews, and speeches, and the content analysis of verbatim explanations technique was used to evaluate them. Increased levels of optimism before the conflict predicted heightened aggression and risk taking, whereas increased levels of pessimism prior to an event predicted passivity and caution.
Schulman, P., Castellon, C., & Seligman, M. E. (1989). Assessing explanatory style: The content analysis of verbatim explanations and the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 27, 505-512.
Compared 2 methods of assessing explanatory style (EPS; the habitual pattern of explanations an individual makes for good and bad events) and their validity with respect to depressive symptoms. The content analysis of verbatim explanations (CAVE) technique allows researchers to analyze naturally occurring verbatim materials for EPS. This technique permits the measurement of populations that are unwilling or unable to take the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), a self-report measure of EPS. 169 undergraduates completed the ASQ and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Written causes on the ASQ were content analyzed, using the CAVE technique. The CAVE technique had satisfactory interrater reliabilities, and the ASQ had satisfactory internal consistency. The CAVE technique correlated significantly with the ASQ, and although both correlated significantly with the BDI, the ASQ had a higher correlation.
Zullow, H. M., Oettingen, G., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1988). Pessimistic explanatory style in the historical record: CAVing LBJ, presidential candidates, and East versus West Berlin. American Psychologist, 43, 673-682.
The habitual way people explain causes (explanatory style) as assessed by questionnaire has been used to predict depression, achievement, and health with a pessimistic style predicting poor outcomes. Because some individuals whose behavior is of interest cannot take questionnaires, their explanatory style can be assessed by blind, reliable content analysis of verbatim explanations (CAVE) from the historical record. We discuss three examples of CAVing archival material. First, shifts to a more optimistic style in Lyndon Johnson's press conferences predicted bold, risky action during the Vietnam War, whereas shifts to pessimism predicted passivity. Second, analyses of presidential candidates' nomination acceptance speeches from 1948 to 1984 showed that candidates who were more pessimistically ruminative lost 9 of the 10 elections. Third, explanatory style and its relation to depressive signs was considered at a societal level.