Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1984 by the

1984, Vol. 46, No. 3, 681-687 American Psychological Association, Inc.

Attributional Style and the Generality of Learned Helplessness

Lauren B. Alloy Christopher Peterson
Northwestern University Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University
Lyn Y. Abramson Martin E. P. Seligman
University of Wisconsin—Madison University of Pennsylvania

According to the logic of the attribution reformulation of learned helplessness, the

interaction of two factors influences whether helplessness experienced in one situation
will transfer to a new situation. The model predicts that people who exhibit a style
of attributing negative outcomes to global factors will show helplessness deficits in
new situations that are either similar or dissimilar to the original situation in which
they were helpless. In contrast, people who exhibit a style of attributing negative
outcomes to only specific factors will show helplessness deficits in situations that
are similar, but not dissimilar, to the original situation in which they were helpless.
To test these predictions, we conducted two studies in which undergraduates with
either a global or specific attributional style for negative outcomes were given one
of three pretreatments in the typical helplessness triadic design: controllable bursts
of noise, uncontrollable bursts of noise, or no noise. In Experiment 1, students
were tested for helplessness deficits in a test situation similar to the pretreatment
setting, whereas in Experiment 2, they were tested in a test situation dissimilar to
the pretreatment setting. The findings were consistent with predictions of the re-
formulated helplessness theory.

According to learned helplessness theory,
people exposed to uncontrollable events learn
that their responses and outcomes are inde-
pendent of each other. This learning can lead
to an expectation that responses will be futile
and can generalize to new situations to inter-
fere with future learning (Seligman, 1975).
Recent laboratory investigations have shown
that induced helplessness is sometimes general
(e.g., Hiroto & Seligman, 1975) and sometimes
circumscribed (e.g., Cole & Coyne, 1977).
Why does learned helplessness sometimes
generalize across situations but at other times
remain specific to one situation? The logic of
the reformulated model of learned helplessness
(Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) sug-
gests that the interaction of two factors influ-
ences whether helplessness experienced in one
This research was supported by a grant from the National
Institute of Mental Health (MH-19604) to Martin E, P.
Seligman. We wish to thank the various participants in
the Helplessness Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania
for assistance in conducting the research.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Lauren B. Alloy,
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 1859
Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60201.
681
situation will transfer to a new situation. These
factors are (a) the causal attribution the person
makes about the uncontrollable events expe-
rienced in the original situation and (b) the
similarity of the new situation to the original
situation (Pasahow, West, & Boroto, 1982). If
the uncontrollable events are attributed to
global causes, factors present in many situa-
tions, then the symptoms of helplessness will
generalize widely across situations. In contrast,
if the uncontrollable events are attributed to
specific causes, factors present in only a few
situations, then the symptoms of helplessness
will not generalize as widely. This analysis sug-
gests that helplessness will be relatively likely
to generalize from the orginal situation to a
new similar situation, regardless of what at-
tribution the person makes for the uncon-
trollable events in the original situation. Al-
ternatively, helplessness should be more likely
to generalize from the original situation to a
new dissimilar situation when the person
makes a global, rather than a specific, attri-
bution for the uncontrollable events in the
original situation.
One factor that influences whether causal
attributions are specific or global is the par-
682 ALLOY, PETERSON, ABRAMSON, AND SELIGMAN
ticular characteristics of the situation in which
helplessness is induced. Several laboratory
studies have shown that situational manipu-
lations of attributions yield results consistent
with the reformulation (see reviews of these
studies in Abramson et al., 1978, and Miller
& Norman, 1979). However, such demonstra-
tions do not explain individual differences in
the selection of a causal attribution in a par-
ticular situation.
A second influence on what attributions an
individual makes may be his or her general
attributional style (Seligman, Abramson,
Semmel, & von Baeyer, 1979). In situations
in which informational cues about the causes
of events are sufficiently ambiguous, individ-
uals' attributional styles will influence their
causal attributions. Thus, when situational
ambiguity about the cause of an uncontrollable
event exists, the individual who habitually
makes global attributions for negative events
will show more general helplessness following
experience with uncontrollable events than will
the individual with a more specific attribu-
tional style. Seligman et al. (1979) described
an Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ)
for measuring individuals' dispositions to
make particular attributions (see also Peterson,
et al., 1982). As yet, however, no study has
investigated how attributional style influences
the generality of laboratory-induced helpless-
ness.
We now report two such investigations. In
both, college students responded to the ASQ
and were divided into two groups based on
mean globality-specificity scores for negative
Table 1
Overall Design of Experiments
Experiment 1: Similar test
Attributional
style Pretreatment Test
global escapable noise shuttlebox
specific escapable noise shuttlebox
global inescapable noise shuttlebox
specific inescapable noise shuttlebox
global no noise (control) shuttlebox
specific no noise (control) shuttlebox
Note. Experiments 1 and 2 are between-subjects designs. Attributional style was determined by the Attributional Style
Questionnaire (Seligman et al., 1979).
events. Also in both experiments, subjects were
then given one of the three pretreatments of
the helplessness triadic design (cf. Maier &
Seligman, 1976; Seligman, 1975): controllable
bursts of noise, uncontrollable bursts of noise,
or no noise. Subjects in the uncontrollable-
noise groups were yoked to subjects in the
controllable-noise groups, receiving identical
bursts of noise, the only difference being that
the controllable-noise subjects could control
the offset of the noise, by pushing a button.
In addition, the pretreatment task was designed
to be sufficiently ambiguous with regard to
the cause of a subject's failure so that attri-
butional styles could operate.
In Experiment 1, subjects were tested, after
pretreatment, with a hand shuttlebox in which
moving a lever to one side or the other of the
box terminated bursts of noise. This test sit-
uation is relatively similar to the pretreatment
situation, because both involve stopping an
unpleasant noise and involve the same ex-
perimenter in the same room as part of the
same experiment. In Experiment 2, subjects
were tested with a series of anagrams. In ad-
dition, the anagram task was conducted by a
different experimenter in a different room as
part of a different experiment (cf. Roth & Ku-
bal, 1975). Thus in Experiment 2, the test
situation was designed to be highly dissimilar
to the pretreatment in order to provide a rel-
atively strong test of the reformulated help-
lessness theory. Table 1 presents the overall
design of the two experiments.
According to the helplessness reformulation,
subjects with either global or specific attri-
Experiment 2: Dissimilar test
Attributional
style Pretreatment Test
global escapable noise anagrams
specific escapable noise anagrams
global inescapable noise anagrams
specific inescapable noise anagrams
global no noise (control) anagrams
specific no noise (control) anagrams
 ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE AND LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 683

butional styles for negative outcomes should ficient alpha, ranging between .44 and .69. For the globality
show escape deficits following experience with dimension for negative events, the dimension used in the
present investigation, alpha was .69. Test-retest correlations
uncontrollable noise in Experiment 1, because over 5 weeks ranged from .57 to .70 and for globality for
the test situation is similar to the pretreatment. negative events, it was .57.
In contrast, in Experiment 2, only subjects Subjects in Experiment 1 were divided at the median
with a global attributional style for negative of globality ratings for negative events (4.00). Subjects above
outcomes should show anagram deficits fol- the median were considered to have a global attributional
style (M = 5.08), and subjects below the median were
lowing experience with uncontrollable noise, considered to have a specific attributional style (M = 2.87).
because the test situation is dissimilar to the Because the attributional dimensions for negative events
pretreatment. Subjects with a specific attri- are intercorrelated (Peterson et al., 1982), scores for in-
butional style for negative outcomes should ternality and stability were also computed for use as co-
show fewer deficits, or no deficits, on the test variates in subsequent analyses.
Subjects also completed the BDI (Beck, 1967), a self-
task in the dissimilar situation. report questionnaire that assesses the severity of depressive
The logic underlying these predictions is that symptoms. This instrument has an internal reliability in
all subjects who become helpless on the pre- the .80s (e.g., Peterson, Schwartz, & Seligman, 1981). It
treatment task, regardless of attributional style, was also included here for use as a covariate, because
attributional style is related to depression (Raps, Peterson,
also will be likely to expect to be helpless in Reinhard, Abramson & Seligman, 1982; Seligman et al.,
a very similar setting, because, presumably, 1979) and depression is associated with poor performance
the cause of their helplessness on the first task at tasks like those used here (Miller & Seligman, 1975).
will be operative in the similar situation. On Pretreatment apparatus. The pretreatment apparatus
is similar to that of Hiroto and Seligman (1975). Subjects
the other hand, subjects who attribute their sat in front of a small box with two lights and three buttons
helplessness on the first task to a specific cause on its top. They received 50 trials of signaled 90 db white
will not expect this cause to be operative in a noise through headphones. Each burst of noise lasted 5 s
dissimilar situation and therefore will not be unless terminated, with a mean intertrial interval of 14 s
(range - 10-25 s). Subjects in the controllable-noise group
likely to expect to be helpless on the task in could terminate the noise once it started by pushing one
the dissimilar setting. Subjects who attribute of the buttons. The lights indicated whether the noise hdd
their helplessness on the first task to a global been successfully terminated. Uncontrollable-noise subjects
cause will expect this cause to be operative in were yoked subject-by-subject to controllable-noise sub-
a wide variety of situations and therefore will jects, receiving the identical amounts of noise. The no-
noise subjects simply sat for a period of time equivalent
be more likely to expect to be helpless in a to the pretreatment prior to engaging in the test task.
dissimilar situation as well as a similar one. Test task. The "similar" test task of Experiment 1 was
the hand shuttlebo* of Hiroto and Seligman (1975). This
Experiment 1 device is a 24 X 5 X 6 in. (61 X 13 X 15 cm.) box with
a 3-in. (7 cm.) knob protruding from the top and sliding
Method on a 19-in. (48 cm.) straight channel. A warning light at
the middle of the box came on 5 s before and terminated
Subjects. Subjects were 108 undergraduates' at the when the 5-s 90 db noise delivered through headphones
University of Pennsylvania, recruited through notices began. Twenty trials were given (mean intertrial interval =
placed on campus bulletin boards, and paid $3 for their 21 s, range =10-45 s). The noise could be terminated
participation in the research. Subjects completed the ASQ by moving the knob to one side of the box after it started.
and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, 1967) On the next trial, the appropriate escape response was
approximately 1 week prior to participation in the lab- moving the knob to the opposite side of the box.
oratory experiment. Equal numbers of men and women Procedure. Approximately I week after completing
participated; sex of subject did not affect the pattern of the ASQ and BDI, subjects were individually tested in
results and is not mentioned further. single sessions conducted in the same room by the same
Questionnaires. The ASQ is described in detail by experimenter. For the pretreatment task, subjects were given
Peterson et al. (1982). Briefly, it provides six positive events these instructions:
(e.g., a friend compliments you on your appearance) and
six negative events (e.g., you go out on a date, and it goes From time to time, a loud tone will come on for a while.
badly). Respondents write down the major cause for each When that tone comes on, there is something you can
event if it happened to them and then rate each of their do to stop it.
chosen causes on 7-point scales in accord with its perceived
internality, stability, and globality (see Abramson et al.,
1978).
1
Means'across events are calculated for each of the three Experiment 1 used more subjects than Experiment 2
dimensions, separately for positive and negative events. (108 vs. 60), because we wished to be conservative and
Peterson et al. (1982) reported internal reliabilities for maximize the possibility of finding the nonpredicted in-
these dimensions, estimated by Cronbach's (1951) coef- teraction in Experiment 1.
684 ALLOY, PETERSON, ABRAMSON, AND SELIGMAN
There are two lights located on this base. The lights will
tell you how the tone on each trial was controlled. If
the green light goes on following the termination of the
tone, then your responses turned it off. If the red light
goes on following termination of the tone, then your
responses did not turn it off, but rather it went off au-
tomatically according to a preprogrammed schedule.
Taking the earphones off or dismantling the apparatus
is not the way to stop the tone.
Immediately after the pretreatment, subjects were shown
the shuttlebox, which had been covered to that point.
They were given these instructions:
You will be given some trials in which a loud tone will
be presented to you. Whenever you hear the tone come
on, there is something you can do to stop it. Taking the
earphones off or dismantling the apparatus is not the
way to stop the noise.
Results
A helplessness effect (i.e., debilitated per-
formance following experience with uncon-
trollable noise) was present for subjects with
either a global or specific attributional style.
Average latencies2 were computed across trials
on the test task for each subject (see Table 2)
and analyzed in a 2 (attributional style) X 3
(pretreatment) between-subjects analysis of
variance (ANOVA). (If a burst of noise was not
terminated, a latency of 5 s was assigned.)
A main effect of pretreatment was found,
F(2, 102) = 11.40, p < .001. Neither attri-
butional style nor its interaction with the pre-
treatment approached statistical significance
(.Fs < 1). Essentially the same main effect of
pretreatment was found, F(2,99) = 11.15, p <
.001, when scores from the BDI and the in-
ternality and stability dimensions of the ASQ
were used as covariates. As Table 2 shows, the
pretreatment effect resulted frtim the poor
performance of uncontrollable-noise subjects
relative to subjects in the other conditions
(Newman-Keuls comparisons among means
are presented in Table 2).
Experiment 2
Method
Subjects. Subjects were 60 undergraduates recruited
and paid as in Experiment 1. Subjects completed the ASQ
and BDI approximately 1 week prior to participation in
the laboratory experiment. Again, equal numbers of men
and women participated, and sex of subject did not affect
the pattern of results.
Questionnaires. The ASQ and BDI are described in
Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, subjects considered to
have a global attributional style for negative events averaged
Table 2
Mean Latencies (in s) in the
Similar-Test Situation
Global Specific
attributional attributional
Pretreatment style style
Escapable noise
M 2.26, 1.98a
SD 1.11 0.75
Inescapable noise
M 3.43b 3.43b
SD 1.17 1.28
No noise (control)
M 2.54, 2.58a
SD 1.25 1.46
Note. Maximum mean latency = 5.00 s. For each condition,
n = 18. Means in a column or row are significantly different
(p < .05) by the Newman-Keuls test if they have different
subscripts.
5.06 on this dimension, whereas subjects with a specific
attributional style averaged 2.87.
Pretreatment apparatus. Experiment 2 used the iden-
tical pretreatment apparatus as Experiment 1.
Test task. The "dissimilar" test task of Experiment 2
was the anagram test task of Hiroto and Seligman (1975):
20 five-letter anagrams scrambled according to the same
sequence (34251). Each anagram was printed on an index
card and was individually given to the subject, who had
up to 100 s to solve it. In addition, the test task was
administered by a different experimenter in a different
room as part of a "second" experiment, in order to max-
imize the perceived dissimilarity between the pretreatment
and test situation (cf. Roth & Kubal, 1975).
Procedure. The same procedure as in Experiment 1
was followed, except that the test task instructions were
changed:
You will be asked to solve some anagrams. As you know,
anagrams are words with the letters scrambled. The
problem for you is to unscramble the letters so that
they form a word. When you've found the word, tell
me what it is.
Results
A helplessness effect occurred for subjects
with a global attributional style for negative
outcomes exposed to uncontrollable noise but
not for those with a specific attributional style
for negative outcomes. Average latencies (see
Footnote 2) for anagram solutions were cal-
2
For the sake of brevity, only latencies are reported.
Analysis using number of failures yielded the same con-
clusions, as would be expected, because latencies and fail-
ures were substantially correlated.
 ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE AND LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
Table 3
Mean Latencies (in s) in the
Dissimilar-Test Situation
Global Specific
attributional attributional
Pretreatment style style
Escapable noise
M 16.4, 17.4a
SD 11.9 6.9
Inescapable noise
M 41.5b 20.0.
SD 26.8 11.5
No noise (control)
M 20.7, 19.0a
SD 13.6 12.2
Note. Maximum mean latency = 100.0 s. For each con-
dition, « = 10. Means in a column or row are significantly
different (p < .05) by the Newman-Keuls test if they have
different subscripts.
culated for each subject (see Table 3) and an-
alyzed in a 2 X 3 between-subjects ANOVA. (If
an anagram was not solved, a latency of 100
s was assigned.)
A main effect of pretreatment was found,
F{2, 54) = 4.66, p < .05, but this is best in-
terpreted in light of the significant interaction
between pretreatment and attributional style,
F(2, 54) = 3.30, p < .05. This interaction re-
sulted from the poor performance by subjects
with a global attributional style for negative
outcomes following experience with uncon-
trollable noise (see Table 3 for Newman-Keuls
comparisons among means). Attributional
style per se did not have a significant effect.
The same interaction term, F(2, 51) = 3.97,
p < .05, was obtained when scores from the
BDI and the internality and stability dimen-
sions of the ASQ were used as covariates.
General Discussion
The results of the study were consistent with
the prediction of the reformulated model of
learned helplessness (Abramson et al., 1978)
that the individual-difference variable of at-
tributional style is a determinant of the gen-
erality of learned helplessness. Subjects who
exhibited a global attributional style for neg-
ative outcomes (as measured by the ASQ)
showed learned helplessness deficits that gen-
eralized to both a similar and a dissimilar sit-
uation following experience with uncontrol-
685
lable noise. In contrast, although learned
helplessness deficits were induced in subjects
with a specific attributional style for negative
outcomes, these deficits only generalized to a
test situation that was similar to the original
situation in which they were exposed to un-
controllable events. Insofar as we varied a
number of elements (e.g., type of task, exper-
imenter, room, and experiment) to maximize
the perceived dissimilarity between the pre-
treatment and test situations in Experiment
2, future parametric studies are necessary to
determine which of these manipulations alone
or in combination was responsible for our ex-
perimental effects. In addition, although our
results were consistent with the theoretical
prediction that attributional style influences
the generality of learned helplessness, the ab-
solute amount of generalization exhibited by
subjects with a global attributional style in our
laboratory experiment was relatively narrow
compared with the widespread helplessness
deficits observed among, say, some concentra-
tion camp inmates or severely depressed people
in the natural environment (cf. Seligman,
1975). Future work should address the rele-
vance of the attributional style construct in
mediating more extreme cases of generaliza-
tion of learned helplessness deficits outside of
the laboratory.
These results also add to the construct va-
lidity of the ASQ (Peterson et al., 1982). Re-
sponses to the ASQ predicted which subjects
would show relatively generalized problem-
solving deficits following experience with un-
controllability and which subjects would not.
According to the reformulated helplessness
theory, the reason subjects with a global at-
tributional style show more generalized per-
formance deficits is that they attribute their
helplessness to a global cause that is likely to
influence performance in situations both sim-
ilar and dissimilar to the original situation in
which they became helpless. An important is-
sue is whether subjects spontaneously make
causal attributions. The fact that subjects will
rate the causes of hypothetical outcomes on
the ASQ does not necessarily mean that they
will use such attributions in the absence of
specific prompting to do so. Recently, several
investigators (Enzle & Schopflocher, 1978;
Pittman & Pittman, 1980; Pyszczynski &
Greenberg, 1981; Swann, Stephenson, & Pitt-
686 ALLOY, PETERSON, ABRAMSON, AND SELIGMAN
man, 1981; Wong & Weiner, 1981) have begun
to specify conditions leading to the initiation
of attributional processing. Two main deter-
minants of the onset of spontaneous causal
analyses have been identified in this research:
experience of failure or loss of control (Pittman
& Pittman, 1980; Swann et al., 1981; Wong
& Weiner, 1981) and unexpected behaviors or
events (Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1981; Wong
& Weiner, 1981). Both of these factors were
likely to be operative in the present experi-
ments; subjects exposed to uncontrollable
noises experienced loss of control and unex-
pected failure in problem solving. Thus, it is
likely that subjects in the uncontrollable-noise
conditions actually made attributions for their
helplessness.
An important task for future research is the
specification of the psychological processes that
mediate the relation between attributional style
and the generality of learned helplessness. We
emphasize that our study was designed to de-
termine whether such a relation exists but not
to examine the processes mediating the rela-
tion. According to the reformulated theory of
helplessness (Abramson et al., 1978), the se-
quence of mediating events is as follows: At-
tributional style influences the causal attri-
bution subjects make for a particular uncon-
trollable event, and this causal attribution for
the particular uncontrollable event influences
subsequent expectations of helplessness,
which, in turn, determine the generality of
learned helplessness: Applying the logic of the
mediational process postulated by the refor-
mulated helplessness theory to our particular
experimental setting, subjects who exhibited
a global attributional style for negative out-
comes should have made a more global attri-
bution for their inability to control noise than
subjects who exhibited a specific attributional
style (e.g., to general stupidity vs. inability at
mechanical tasks). Because a global attribution
for the cause of helplessness has implications
for performance in a wider variety of settings
than does a specific attribution for helplessness,
subjects with a global attributional style should
expect this cause to be present and thus expect
to be helpless in the dissimilar test situation
(anagrams, Experiment 2) as well as the similar
test situation (shuttlebox, Experiment 1). Sub-
jects with a specific attributional style, who
presumably make a specific attribution for
their helplessness, should only expect this cause
to be present in the similar test situation. Ac-
cording to Abramson et al. (1978), if the ex-
pectation of uncontrollability is present in a
given situation, helplessness behavioral deficits
will ensue. Thus subjects with a global attri-
butional style should exhibit poor performance
in both the similar and dissimilar test situa-
tions, whereas subjects with a specific attri-
butional style should exhibit poor performance
only in the similar test situation. This is, of
course, the pattern of results we obtained. To
test the validity of the mediational processes
hypothesized by Abramson et al., it will be
necessary to assess the intervening causal at-
tributions for the particular uncontrollable
event as well as subsequent expectations of
helplessness (Alloy, 1982).
Because our study uses a design that was
partially correlational, it is possible that con-
trary to the reformulated helplessness theory,
some third variable mediated the relation be-
tween globality of attributional style and gen-
erality of learned helplessness. Given the pre-
viously reported positive correlation between
individuals' level of depression and their ten-
dency to make global attributions for negative
outcomes (e,g., Seligman et al., 1979), one
possible mediating third variable is subjects'
initial level of depression. However, the fact
that our findings remained unchanged when
subjects' initial BDI scores were used as co-
variates in the statistical analyses is not con-
sistent with this particular third variable hy-
pothesis. Alternative potential third variables
include subjects' tendencies to make internal
or stable attributions for negative outcomes.
However, these third variables also did not
appear to be operative because the pattern of
findings remained unchanged when subjects'
scores along these attributional dimensions
were used as covariates. An alternative third
variable hypothesis, which could not be ex-
amined in this study, is that subjects who ex-
hibit global attributional styles for negative
events experience more depressive affect fol-
lowing experience with an unsolvable problem
(cf. Metalsky, Abramson, Seligman, Semmel,
& Peterson, 1982) and that this depressive af-
fect rather than their particular causal attri-
butions and expectations mediates the relation
between global attributional style and gener-
alized learned helplessness. Thus, future stud-
 ATTRIBUTIONS, STYLE AND LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
ies using experimental manipulations and
causal modeling techniques will be required
to pit the mediational hypothesis proposed by
the reformulated helplessness theory against
the depressive affect mediational hypothesis as
well as other rival mediational hypotheses.
In their reformulated model of learned
helplessness and depression, Abramson et al.
(1978) hypothesized that certain attributional
styles are vulnerability factors for depressive
reactions to negative life events. Our results
show that people who exhibit a style of at-
tributing negative outcomes to global causes
show greater generalization of learned help-
lessness to new situations than do people who
do not exhibit the global attributional style
for negative outcomes. Complementing these
findings, Metalsky et al. (1982) recently con-
ducted a study in a naturalistic setting and
found that the more global a student's attri-
butional style for negative outcomes, the more
severe was his or her depressive mood reaction
to a negative life event (i.e., receipt of a low
midterm grade; r = .32). Taken together, these
studies suggest that people with global attri-
butional styles for negative outcomes are par-
ticularly vulnerable to debilitating behavioral
and emotional responses to negative events.
Because both studies used prospective designs,
they may have implications for identifying in-
dividuals who are at high risk for "helplessness
depression" (Seligman, 1978) and intervening
with strategies designed to help these individ-
uals modify their deleterious attributional
styles.
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Received August 9, 1982
Revision received January 26, 1983 •