Depression and hopelessness -

Bias in emotional processing has been implicated in the

maintenance of depression;

sensitive to negative affect and show a negativity bias when

interpreting ambiguous stimuli.

ambiguous emotions as sad may change behaviour, which may

in turn elicit negative reactions from others and thus sustain these

biases in people with depression. However, there is little direct

evidence of a causal relationship between biases in emotional



people who are depressed are more

Cognitive theories of depression hold that biases in the interpretation

of the meaning and cause of life stressors are partial

mediators of an individual’s emotional response to these events

(Clark, Beck, & Alford, 1999; Riskind & Alloy, 2006). One

specific cognitive formulation, the hopelessness theory of depression,

proposes that a primary factor in depression vulnerability is

a depressogenic attributional style: a predisposition to form biased

interpretations about the cause of stressful life events (Abramson,

Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989). The hopelessness theory of depression

holds that when an individual attributes negative life events to

stable and global causes, views the event as evidence of personal

flaws, and believes that negative events are likely in the future, the

individual becomes more susceptible to depressive reactions