William K. Boardman

Attribution of Depression to Internal-External and Stable-Unstable Causes: Preliminary Investigation

The present study investigated the effects of severity, consistency, and typicalness of information about a hypothetical case of depression on causal explanations for depression. 119 undergraduates responded to brief descriptions of a depressed individual by rating (1 to 6) the extent to which the depression was due to each of four types of causes: internal stable, internal unstable, external stable, and external unstable. Severity was associated with greater attribution to internal stable causes. The consistency of the depression tended to produce attribution to stable causes, and typicalness tended to produce attribution to external causes.

The effect of severity, consistency, and typicalness information on clinicians' causal attributions

Sixty-four clinicians responded to a brief description of a depressed student by indicating the extent to which each of four possible causes contributed to the depression. The descriptions were varied systematically so that the students depression was described as either mild or severe, typical or atypical, and as having occurred before or as never having occurred before. Results indicated greater attribution of the depression to internal causal factors when the individuals depression was described as atypical and greater attribution to stable causal factors when the depression was described as having occurred previously. When the depression was described as severe, the clinicians tended to attribute it to external unstable causes. It was suggested that clinicians may differ from other populations in some of the causal attributions that they make for psychological difficulties.

Life Experience Patterns and Development of College Leadership Roles

An 80% sample of the 1968 freshman class of the University of Georgia were administered a biographical questionnaire and were grouped according to similarity of factor score profiles. Grouped and non-grouped Ss were compared in their junior year in terms of incidence of office holders in campus organizations. 5 of the 23 male groups contained 59% of the grouped male leaders. Pre-college experiences may allow early identification of male groups with high college leadership potential.

Body Boundary and Stimulus Enhancement.

The relationship between body boundary and stimulus intensity was investigated by means of lifted weights. Ss with high Barrier scores were hypothesized to judge weights as heavier than those with lower scores. A disrupting variable was introduced into the task to test the second hypothesis that attention contributed to the heightened intensity of stimuli. The first hypothesis was supported. The second hypothesis was not supported as both groups were equally affected by the disrupting variable.