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The comparative study of depressive group and anxious group in irrational beliefs and attributional style

Abstract

In this study, the cognitive aspects of depressive and anxious group which are very similar but distinctive, were compared. Especially, among many cognitive aspects, irrational beliefs and attributional style were studied. Such study will be helpful to understand the features of depression and anxiety, and also, to find the discriminative therapy. To start with, the reliability and factorial validity of Irrational Beliefs Test and Attributional Style Questionnaire were examined in the preliminary study. In study 1, correlation and multiple regression analysis were executed for 260 college students, and One-way ANOVA and discriminant analysis were executed for 104 students. In study 2, the results from study 1 were cross-validated with new samples. The results were as follows. In irrational beliefs, the common features of depression and anxiety were 'anxious over-concern' and 'helplessness over the past'. The irrational belief which could discriminate between depressive and anxious group was 'high self-expectation', which was specific to anxious group. With regard to attributions, depressive group and anxious group made more unstable attributions far positive events, and more stable, unchangeable, and uncontrollable attributions for negative events than control group. Such dysfunctional attributional style appeared in depressive group and anxious group commonly, but when the situations were specified, the latter made more dysfunctional attribution than the former in the negative achievement situations. This result shows that anxious group is very sensitive to achievement, which is similar to the fact that anxious group shows 'high self-expectation' and 'high desire for achievement' in irrational beliefs. The implications of this study to cognitive therapy, the limitations of this, and the direction of further research were discussed.

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