The Relationship Between Attributional Style and Learned Helplessness in Interpersonal Situations

An initial investigation was done to assess the relationship between attributional style and learned helplessness in an interpersonal situation. Forty female subjects were given the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) at the beginning of the semester and were called a month or more later to participate in a dating experiment. The subjects gave attributions for rejection and acceptance for the dating situations as well as their expectations for being accepted by each man. Depressive affect was measured at the beginning of the experiment, after the first rejection and after they were to assume a second rejection or acceptance. The ASQ was analyzed internally. The construct validity of attributional style, as measured by the ASQ, was validated by comparing the specific attributions for the date rejection with the subjects' general attributional style. The results were discussed in terms of the reformulated learned helplessness model.