Recovery from dysphoria: Testing hopelessness theory

Based on the hopelessness theory of depression and earlier research by Needles and Abramson (1990), we expected that in the presence of favorable events, individuals who attributed positive events to stable, global causes and inferred positive characteristics about themselves would be especially likely to become hopeful, and thus recover from dysphoria. Among 94 subjects initially scoring over 9 on the Beck Depression Inventory, attributions for positive events were not related to recovery by a 3-week follow-up assessment. In addition, in the presence of positive events, positive self-characterizations were associated with more, rather than the predicted fewer, subsequent depressive symptoms. Overgeneralization of negative events, however, was predictive of non-recovery from dysphoria.