... these cognitive and motivational deficits to the relative lack of motivation and cognitive processes sometimes considered to be symptoms of depression. However, although this theory does successfully link a helpless attribution to a helplessness response, it does not encompass attributional style and it also cannot explain why differing degrees of depression are clearly apparent. Further still, the proposed personal lack of controllability which some people may have, cannot be the only attributional link with depression. Abramson et al (1978) extended Seligman's original learned helplessness theory of depression to include the concept of attributional style and proposed that there are two important factors involved within the formation of a depressogenic nature, these being the personal attributions made as to why an apparently bad situation occurred and the dispositional way people make attributions. These attributions, according to Abramson et al (1978) can be made along three dimensions. The first of these dimensions is ...

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