Contributions of Basic Research to the Cognitive Theories of Depression

Abstract

This article shows how the development of two major cognitive theories of depression - hopelessness theory and Beck's schema theory-were inspired by basic research in psychology. Whereas attribution theory helped resolve ambiguities in the original helplessness theory, additional social psychological concepts helped transform the reformulated helplessness theory into a hopelessness theory. For example, the current theory features situational determinants of causal attributions, a diathesis-stress component, and a specific-vulnerability component, each influenced by basic work in social psychology. The authors also draw on basic research to suggest revisions in Beck's theory. They suggest that (a) both depressives and nondepressives are capable of a full range of processing biases, (b) depressives are responsive to situational information, (c) factors other than "feature match " influence negative schema activation, (d) the "self" in depression is multifaceted, and (e) associative network models can be used to operationalize the depressive schema.