Beck believed that depression prone individuals develop a negative self-schema. They possess a set of beliefs and expectations about themselves that are essentially negative and pessimistic. Beck claimed that negative schemas may be acquired in childhood as a result of a traumatic event. Experiences that might contribute to negative schemas include:
- Death of a parent or sibling.
- Parental rejection, criticism, overprotection, neglect or abuse.
- Bullying at school or exclusion from peer group.
However, a negative self-schema predisposes the individual to depression, and therefore someone who has acquired a cognitive triad will not necessarily develop depression. Some kind of stressful life event is required to activate this negative schema later in life. Once the negative schema are activated a number of illogical thoughts or cognitive biases seem to dominate thinking.
People with negative self schemas become prone to making logical errors in their thinking and they tend to focus selectively on certain aspects of a situation while ignoring equally relevant information.
Beck (1967) identified a number of systematic negative bias' in information processing known as logical errors or faulty thinking. These illogical thought patterns are self-defeating, and can cause great anxiety or depression for the individual. For example:
- Arbitrary Inference. Drawing a negative conclusion in the absence of supporting data.
- Selective Abstraction. Focusing on the worst aspects of any situation.
- Magnification and Minimisation. If they have a problem they make it appear bigger than it is. If they have a solution they make it smaller.
- Personalization. Negative events are interpreted as their fault.
- Dichotomous Thinking. Everything is seen as black and white. There is no in between.
Such thoughts exacerbate, and are exacerbated by the cognitive triad. Beck believed these thoughts or this way of thinking become automatic. When a person’s stream of automatic thoughts is very negative you would expect a person to become depressed. Quite often these negative thoughts will persist even in the face of contrary evidence.
Critical Evaluation
Alloy et al. (1999) followed the thinking styles of young Americans in their early 20s for 6 years. Their thinking style was tested and they were placed in either the ‘positive thinking group’ or ‘negative thinking group’. After 6 years the researchers found that only 1% of the positive group developed depression compared to 17% of the ‘negative’ group. These results indicate there may be a link between cognitive style and development of depression.
However such a study may suffer from demand characteristics. The results are also correlational. It is important to remember that the precise role of cognitive processes is yet to be determined. The maladaptive cognitions seen in depressed people may be a consequence rather than a cause of depression.
Learned Helplessness
Martin Seligman (1974) proposed a cognitive explanation of depression called learned helplessness. According to Seligman’s learned helplessness theory, depression occurs when a person learns that their attempts to escape negative situations make no difference.
As a consequence they become passive and will endure aversive stimuli or environments even when escape is possible.
Seligman based his theory on research using dogs.
A dog put into a partitioned cage learns to escape when the floor is electrified. If the dog is restrained whilst being shocked it eventually stops trying to escape.
Dogs subjected to inescapable electric shocks later failed to escape from shocks even when it was possible to do so. Moreover, they exhibited some of the symptoms of depression found in humans (lethargy, sluggishness, passive in the face of stress and appetite loss).
This led Seligman (1974) to explain depression in humans in terms of learned helplessness, whereby the individual gives up trying to influence their environment because they have learned that they are helpless as a consequence of having no control over what happens to them.
Although Seligman’s account may explain depression to a certain extent, it fails to take into account cognitions (thoughts). Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978) consequently introduced a cognitive version of the theory by reformulating learned helplessness in term of attributional processes (i.e. how people explain the cause of an event).
The depression attributional style is based on three dimensions, namely locus (whether the cause is internal - to do with a person themselves, or external - to do with some aspect of the situation), stability (whether the cause is stable and permanent or unstable and transient) and global or specific (whether the cause relates to the 'whole' person or just some particular feature characteristic).
In this new version of the theory, the mere presence of a negative event was not considered sufficient to produce a helpless or depressive state. Instead, Abramson et al. argued that people who attribute failure to internal, stable, and global causes are more likely to become depressed than those who attribute failure to external, unstable and specific causes. This is because the former attributional style leads people to the conclusion that they are unable to change things for the better.
Critical Evaluation
Gotlib and Colby (1987) found that people who were formerly depressed are actually no different from people who have never been depressed in terms of their tendencies to view negative events with an attitude of helpless resignation.
This suggests that helplessness could be a symptom rather than a cause of depression. Moreover, it may be that negative thinking generally is also an effect rather than a cause of depression.
Humanist Approach
Humanists believe that there are needs that are unique to the human species. According to Maslow (1962) the most important of these is the need for self-actualization (achieving out potential). The self actualizing human being has a meaningful life. Anything that blocks our striving to fulfil this need can be a cause of depression. What could cause this?
- Parents imposing conditions of worth on their children. I.e. rather than accepting the child for who s/he is and giving unconditional love, parents make love conditional on good behavior. E.g. a child may be blamed for not doing well at school, develop a negative self-image and feel depressed because of a failure to live up to parentally imposed standards.
- Some children may seek to avoid this by denying their true self and projecting an image of the kind of person they want to be. This façade or false self is an effort to please others. However the splitting off of the real self from the person you are pretending to be causes hatred of the self. The person then comes to despise themselves for living a lie.
- As adults self-actualization can be undermined by unhappy relationships and unfulfilling jobs. An empty shell marriage means the person is unable to give and receive love from their partner. An alienating job means the person is denied the opportunity to be creative at work.
APA Style References
Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: critique and reformulation. Journal of abnormal psychology, 87(1), 49.
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How to reference this article:
McLeod, S. A. (2015, January 14). Psychological theories of depression. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/depression.html
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