Attributional Style
Updated 2026-08-06
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Developed by Martin Seligman and colleagues in research on learned helplessness, attributional or explanatory style describes how people habitually explain events along three dimensions: internal versus external, stable versus temporary, and global versus specific. Optimists attribute good outcomes to internal, stable and global causes and bad outcomes to external, temporary and specific ones; pessimists do the reverse. Style predicts depression risk, health and achievement, and it can be retrained.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Audit the explanation: check whether a setback was attributed internally, permanently and globally. - Rewrite the bad case: move failures to external, temporary and specific causes where the evidence supports it. - Rewrite the good case: credit successes to causes you control and can repeat.
Anchor fast decisions
Explanations that make a failure permanent and universal remove any reason to act, because no available action could change it. Explanations that make it temporary and specific leave a route to improvement, so effort continues. Continued effort then produces the outcomes that confirm the more hopeful explanation, which is why the style is self-reinforcing.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_styleverified
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