Text 6. Attributions

In everyday life people often add to the stress which they feel by thinking in negative ways: worrying about how dreadful things are, or might become. Since even a single worrying thought adds to our level of arousal, thinking in this way adds to the total arousal and stress which that person is feeling. Sometimes people even develop ways of thinking which are totally self-defeating. Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale (1985) found that chronically depressed people often have what they called a depressive attributional style, which makes their depression much worse.

Attributions are the reasons that we give for why things happen. Someone with a depressive attributional style will believe that anything which happens will only turn out for the worse, that it is always going to be that way, and that it cannot be changed. These thoughts keep their depression going, partly by increasing the stress that they are under, and partly by making them feel that there is not any point in trying to do anything anyway. In other words, they feel helpless, and unable to control what happens in their lives.

(Nicky Hayes. Psychology. – Great Britain; Cox & Wyman Ltd., 1994, – 260p.)

Assignments

I. Memorize the following words and phrases:

self-defeating	приречений на провал
to turn out for the worse	закінчуватися погано
attribution	приписування

II. Suggest the Ukrainian equivalents of the phrases below:

dreadful things; chronically depressed people; depressive attributional style; to increase the stress; there is not any point in trying to do anything; to feel helpless.

III. Find English equivalents to the following phrases:

посилювати стрес; немає сенсу навіть намагатися щось робити; люди, які перебувають у стані хронічної депресії.

IV. Answer the questions:

1. Why is the way of thinking developed by chronically depressed people self-defeating?

2. Explain the term “depressive attributional style”.

Text 7. Locus of Control

People with different attributional styles, who see themselves as able to control events by hard work of effort, and who do not give up, tend to experience stress very differently. They are much less likely to become depressed, and much more likely to be able actually to do something about their situation, because they keep looking for ways to change it. These people have what is known as an internal locus of control. They believe that what happens to them is largely controlled by their own efforts. People with a depressive artributional style have an external locus of control believing that what happens to them is not something that they can influence.

There is a great deal of psychological research which shows that having an internal locus of control is much healthier for a human being – both physically and mentally. Long-term stress can lower the body’s resistance to disease, and make us vulnerable to illness. But people with an internal locus of control experience less stress, even though their physical situation may be just as bad. This is because they channel their energies into looking for positive things to do, instead of just worrying. And because they are likely to gain at least a small success through trying so hard, they experience positive emotions like a sense of achievement, which people who are more passive do not feel.

Having an internal locus of control is not something we are born with. We can learn to change our thought-habits and behaviour, so that we shift from an external to an internal locus of control. Cognitive therapy is all about teaching the person how to take control of their own lives, and how to avoid the self-defeating beliefs and attributions which have stopped them from doing so in the past. And almost anything which increases someone's self-confidence has the effect of giving them more of an internal locus of control over their own life. So there is a great deal that we can do to cope with stressful problems positively. Problems may be real, and not likely to go away, but we can make their effects worse or better, depending on how we go about it.

We can see, then, that the psychological study of emotions can give us a great many insights into this aspect of our lives. We have many more positive emotions than we sometimes realise, and these may be associated with quite small events as well as quite large ones. Studying fear and anger raises interesting questions about how our experiences relate to the physical states that we are feeling. And the psychological study of anxiety and stress has allowed us to identify positive ways of coping with problems as they arise.

(Nicky Hayes. Psychology. – Great Britain; Cox & Wyman Ltd., 1994, – 260p.)