Depressive irrationality: A difference in rationality or expectancy?

Irrationality is a key concept in both Ellis' Rational-Emotive Theory and Beck's Cognitive Theory of Depression. This study investigated the purported irrationality for justifications of explanations of events of people with Major Depression as compared with Non-depressed and Dysphoric people. With a mixed sample, community and undergraduate volunteers, this study revealed that Depressed subjects were more irrational when justifying causes of negative events while Non-depressed subjects were more irrational when justifying causes of positive events. These results are in accordance with the hypothesis that differences in irrationality previously attributed to diagnostic category alone, may be a function of expectancy of events in interaction with diagnostic status, such that events which are expected are those that are explained more irrationally, while unexpected events are those that are explained more rationally.