1997/02/01 by Athena Xenikou, Adrian Furnham, Michael McCarrey · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Psychology #Style (visual arts) #Proposition #Measure (data warehouse) #Attribution #Social psychology #Cognitive psychology #Epistemology
paper · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1997.tb02620.x
openalex publication_date 1997/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/19
This study examines the concept of attributional style, first by testing Seligman's (1990) assumption that attributions for positive and negative events do form a single dimension; second by challenging the cross‐situational consistency of the causal dimension of internality; and third by investigating the reliability and validity of negative stability and globality as measures of pessimism and confidence. The results supported the hypothesis that attributional style for positive events and attributional style for negative events should be considered as orthogonal variables and that the dimensions of internality (positive and negative) are not consistent across situations. Finally, even though both negative stability and negative globality were shown to be reliable measures, only negative globality was proven to be a valid measure of pessimism and confidence.