Skip to main content

The 3Ps of Pessimistic Explanatory Style in Depression


When faced with an adversity, people with depression default to a pessimistic explanatory style (Sweeney et al., 1986). This rigid style has three facets, also called the 3Ps (Reivich & Shatté, 2002; Seligman, 2006):

1. “Personal” thinking wherein a person finds a cause within themselves to explain an adverse situation. For example, if your boss didn’t respond back to your “Hi,” you assume that they are not happy with you.

2. “Permanent” thinking wherein a person facing a bad outcome believes that the situation is a never ending ordeal rather than temporary. For example, you have a disagreement with your coworker and your knee jerk reaction is, “She is always doing this to me.”

3. “Pervasive” thinking in which a person thinks that a particular problem will affect many areas of their life rather than having a circumscribed effect. For instance, you fail to meet a deadline at work and feel that you have never been an organized person your entire life.

People with pessimistic explanatory styles, when faced with a failure, tend to slip into a state of learned helplessness, which is a harbinger of depression (Seligman, 2006). Learned helplessness is the state of mind when an individual expects that they have no response in their repertoire to change the likelihood of an adverse outcome. A person with depression attributes a sense of personal helplessness to a failure (e.g., I am stupid versus the exam was tough). Research has supported the association of pessimistic explanatory style with depression and also change in explanatory style leading to improvement in depressive symptoms (Raps et al., 1982; Seligman et al., 1988). Learning to recognize your pessimistic explanatory style helps you “think outside the box” for alternative explanations for adversities and avoiding learned helplessness. It provides you with a more accurate view of the situation and helps you problem-solve more creatively rather than being stuck in a negative explanatory loop.

As an exercise to help you change your explanatory style, identify three recent adverse situations related to different spheres of your life (work, relationships, personal life, etc.) and try to ascertain if your explanatory style consists of one or more of the 3 Ps of the pessimistic explanatory style. If you discover that your explanatory style is mostly pessimistic, then for future stressful situations, complete these three statements to help you shake off this unhelpful explanatory style (Reivich & Shatté, 2002):

1. “A more accurate way of seeing this is …”
2. “That’s not true because …”
3. “A more likely outcome is … and I can (what you can do) to deal with it.”

To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that are proven to work for depression, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page. 

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Raps, C. S., Peterson, C., Reinhard, K. E., Abramson, L. Y., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). 
Attributional style among depressed patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 91, 102-108. 

Reivich, K., & Shatté, A. (2002). The resilience factor. New York, NY: Broadway Books. 

Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Learned optimism. New York, NY: Vintage Books. 

Seligman, M. E. P., Castellon, C., Cacciola, J., Schulman, P., Luborsky, L., Ollove, M., & Downing, R. (1988). Explanatory style change during cognitive therapy for unipolar depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 97(1), 13-18. 

Sweeney, P. D., Anderson, K., & Bailey, S. (1986). Attributional style in depression: a meta-analytic review. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(5), 974-991.







Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Value-Based Goals: The Antidote for “Success Depression”

A disconnect between your present accomplishments and your core values may make you suffer from success depression  wherein despite “having it all” (e.g., successful career, stable relationships, healthy children, etc.), you still struggle with depression and view your accomplishments as hollow (Zettle, 2007). The cure for this malaise is to clarify your core values and have goals and actions that are driven by these values. Psychotherapist Russ Harris describes values as our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people, and ourselves. They are what we want to stand for in life, how we want to behave, what sort of person we want to be, and what sort of strengths and qualities we want to develop (Harris, 2009). Values are subjective; what one may consider as a value (e.g., being famous) may be considered as being cocky by another person. Moreover, values do change with time. For instance, you may value social popularity and raising a fa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The 6 Facets of Impostor Syndrome and its Relation to Depression

A lot has been written recently about impostor syndrome, also called impostor phenomenon in scientific literature. Most pop psychology descriptions of this condition, which impairs professional performance and leads to burnout, skew towards making this a syndrome of perceived fraudulence or fear of being seen as fake. However, the fact is that people with impostor syndrome describe a myriad of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and none of the existing scales capture all the facets of this complex and multifaceted syndrome (Mark et al., 2019). Also, contrary to popular belief, impostor syndrome is not limited to highly successful individuals and depends more on how people respond to specific achievement tasks when there is an element of being appraised.  The six facets that define this phenomenon are discussed below: (Bravata et al., 2019; Clance & Imes, 1978; Walker & Saklofske, 2023). 1. Fake: This attribute is the closest to the original conceptualization of imposto...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rumination: A Maladpative Coping Style that Fosters Depression

Rumination is a maladaptive style of responding to stressful situations in which a person repetitively and passively focuses on the symptoms of distress and the possible causes and consequences of these symptoms. Ruminators mistakenly believe that by focusing on their past feelings, they can somehow have a better understanding of their emotions and this will help them solve their problems. The opposite is true: rumination makes people more fixated on their problems and feelings without leading to any active problem-solving to change the circumstances around these symptoms. Research shows that women are more likely to engage in rumination compared to men, which also makes them more prone for depression (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Rumination fosters inactivity and can come in the way of getting things done. Many people confuse rumination with worry, but these two entities differ in the following ways (Lyubomirsky et al., 2015): Rumination is focused on the past while worry is fo...
Post a Comment
Read more