Construct of attributional style in depression and marital distress.

Although important theoretically, consistency in attribution responses or attributional style has rarely been investigated empirically. The responses of 150 couples were used to examine whether consistency of attribution responses within attribution dimensions and consistency in the pattern of responses across attribution dimensions were associated with adaptational outcomes. Replicating previous findings, mean attribution scores correlated with depression and with marital distress. Consistency of attribution responses was unrelated to either adaptational outcome, whereas (a) theoretically derived pessimistic and optimistic attribution patterns were related to depression scores and (b) benign and nonbenign marital attribution patterns were related to marital satisfaction scores. The implications of these findings for the level at which attributional stvle is best conceptualized are discussed.