I present seven empirical studies that investigate two main themes regarding two main approaches of optimism: explanatory style and dispositional optimism. The first theme incorporates measurement issues and conceptual ideas of optimism and the second involves optimism interventions on depressive symptoms. In Study 1 I explored the potential psychometric structure of causal attributions and dispositional optimism. Attributions may be best viewed as reflecting large differences in cognitive style, and smaller independent positive- and negative-event biases. For dispositional optimism, a two-factor model was supported. Study 2 examined correlations between optimism and the Five-Factor Model of personality. Dispositional optimism and explanatory style had similar association patterns with personality, although there were some differences. Study 3 tested and supported a model in which dispositional optimism mediates the link between explanatory style and psychological well-being. Study 4 compared the levels of optimism expression in two ethnic groups, finding that Mainland Chinese participants were more optimistic and less pessimistic than White British. Study 5 examined attributional biases and found that individuals show more optimistic biased style for themselves than for other people. Studies 6 and 7 tested effectiveness of optimism interventions on depressive symptoms. It demonstrated that self-monitored optimism interventions on a daily basis could effectively reduce depressive symptoms and increase optimistic explanatory style. Taken together, the studies replicated some previous investigations regarding measurement issues and conceptual ideas of optimism, and explored novel approaches to examining the essence of attributional bias and effectiveness of optimism interventions in depression treatment. My investigation of attributional bias is the first to test this idea using new and comparable measures of attributions. Practicing self-administered optimism interventions is, to my knowledge, also the first time these interventions have been applied in a sample with mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms. This may provide an easily monitored and low-cost alternative to traditional treatments of depression.

Investigations of children's adjustment following the experience of a residential fire or other disaster has indicated that the level of PTSD symptoms experienced by the child victims varies as a function of exposure and degree of loss incurred due to the trauma in a dose-response relationship. Additionally, other variables may interact with the level of exposure and loss to increase or decrease children's risk of posttraumatic symptomatology following the fire. Children's use of coping strategies has also been shown to significantly predict children's level of posttraumatic stress symptomatology. This study examined the mediating role of coping as well as the contributions of children's attributional style and family environment in the explanation of children's posttraumatic symptomatology following residential fire. In the current study, 108 children and their parents were assessed approximately one to three months and again approximately seven to ten months following their experience of a residential fire. Results indicated that at the second assessment, attributional style served as a moderator between the degree of loss children experienced and children's use of coping strategies. Children with helpless attributional styles reported low levels of active and avoidant coping regardless of their level of loss due to the fire. Children with positive attributional styles reported using low levels of coping only if they also reported low levels of loss; in contrast, those children who reported positive attributional styles and high levels of loss reported using considerably higher levels of coping. In addition, the data indicated that coping acted as a mediator between loss and posttraumatic stress symptoms both at the first and the second assessments. Children's coping activities following a trauma like residential fire may be the avenue through which loss exerts its influence on children's psychological symptoms following residential fire. / Master of Science

Recent efforts to understand and predict the onset and maintenance of aggression have considered the heterogeneity of this behavior. Dodge (1980) and others, have suggested a distinction in aggression based on two primary subtypes: reactive and proactive aggression. The form, severity and persistence of these aggressive subtypes may depend on an on-going interaction between individual characteristics and environmental characteristics that elicit varying antecedents and consequences (Frick, 1998; Lahey et al., 1999). In particular, there exists some empirical support for the existence of relations among social likeability, attributional style, and particular subtypes of aggression symptomology. However, the exact nature of this relation is unclear. The current study examined two competing models, the mediator and moderator models, to assess the nature of the relations among social likeability, attributional style, and aggression subtypes in a sample of 419 youth in a non-clinical community setting. Results suggest that the external, stable, global attributional style serves to mediate the relation between social likeability and reactive, but not proactive aggression. Implications for assessment and treatment of aggression in adolescents are discussed. / Master of Science

Cognitive vulnerabilities have been implicated in the development of post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorders, two disorders that commonly co-occur. The comorbidity of these two disorders continues to pose a significant threat to the well being of university students. This study investigated the associations between the cognitive vulnerability of negative attributional style and both post-traumatic stress symptoms and alcohol use patterns. The number of reported traumatic events were also included in analyses. A battery of self-report questionnaires was completed by 123 university undergraduate students (mean age of 20.41 years). Negative attributional style was found to be significantly associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms, but not with alcohol use. It was also suggested that multiple traumas have an impact on post-traumatic stress, despite levels of alcohol use. These results suggested that the cognitive vulnerability of negative attributional style is predictive of posttraumatic stress in students and research in this area is valuable for increasing resilience, prevention and recovery among trauma survivors. Recommendations for future research, especially concerning multiple traumatisation is discussed.

¡@¡@Owing to the entry into WTO, which requires an open insurance market, and the legislation of the six ¡§Financial Holding Company Acts¡¨ that allows cross deals across different financial sections and multi-channeled selling, Taiwan¡¦s insurance market, of which the ratio of life insurance arrived at 182% in 2006, is squeezing the marketing space of the local life insurance agents, frustrating and driving them away. ¡@¡@This research aims primarily to investigate the relationships of the specific personality traits of a life insurance agent, his/her attributional style of rejection and selling performance, and hopefully to offer tools in selecting potential life insurance agents. At the same time, this research hopes to render stimulating, training and helpful devices for the practicing agents of various types of personality. ¡@¡@The measurement scales in this research paper consist of five questionnaires about personality traits and attributional style of rejection, and the voluntary participants are agents working for a life insurance company of which annual performance is among the top five, according to the database of the Taiwan Insurance Institute, while collecting their annual performance data as the dependent variable. Three hundred copies of the questionnaires are distributed and there are 125 effective copies returned, at a ratio of 42%. The statistical approaches applied are correlation analysis and regression analysis in support of the hypothesis. ¡@¡@By correlation analysis and regression analysis, the conclusions reached are: 1, The extroversion construction in the ¡§Five-Factor of Personality Traits¡¨ interacts positively with the policy sale and the first-year premium collection, which reaches the level of significance. It shows that the better an agent¡¦s extroversion construction is, the better performance of his/her policy sale and first-year premium collection will be. 2, The stability of an agent¡¦s attributional style of rejection interacts negatively with his/her policy sale and first-year premium collection, which reaches the level of significance. It shows that the more stable an agent¡¦s attributional style of rejection is, which means he/she takes the rejection of the client as something normal, the worse performance of his/her policy sale and first-year premium collection will be. ¡@¡@The managerial implications and the following researching suggestions are also discussed in this research paper. Key words: The Five-Factor of Personality Traits, the Attributional Style of Rejection,Performance

Research has documented the age of first onset of depression is commonly in adolescence and young adulthood and that prepubertal onsets are occurring at an increasing rate. Thus, targeting interventions prior to this period of increased risk would maximize the opportunity to reduce the incidence of depression. To date, however, the limited research that has been done on protective factors has lacked some consensus and generalizability. This study focused on investigating potential individual and family protective factors and their roles in the development of depressive symptoms in early adolescent girls. More specifically, optimism was investigated as a possible mediator of the relationship between attributional style and depression. Furthermore, attributional style and family environment were hypothesized to moderate the effect of stress on depressive symptomatology. The participants of this study were 120 girls that were part of a school based cognitive behavioral group treatment study for girls with depression aged 9-14. Based on the ratings of symptoms by the girls and their caregivers, on a semi-structured diagnostic interview, two groups were identified: 1) girls that met the diagnostic criteria for a depressive disorder (n= 81), and 2) those that did not (control group; n= 39). Both samples also completed self-report measures of attributional style and family environment (i.e., cohesion, communication, and sociability), in addition to a projective measure which was coded for dispositional optimism. The results of this study suggested higher levels of optimism and more positive attributional styles independently predicted lower levels of depressive symptom severity; however, optimism did not impact the relationship between attributional style and depression. The results also demonstrated that girls who reported their families engage in more social/recreational activities had lower levels of depressive symptoms. Finally, increased life stress was not associated with increased levels of depression. The study's limitations, implications of the results, and recommendations for future research were discussed. / text

Relationship violence is a serious social problem. Given the prevalence and detrimental effects of relationship violence, much research has been undertaken to investigate the various risk factors that may be associated with this type of violence. In the present research, I examined the interrelationships among several correlates of violence (including rejection sensitivity, cognitive biases, decoding deficits and attachment style) in order to understand what differentiates physically abusive from non-abusive individuals. Hence, the current program of studies examined aggressive behaviours between partners with a focus on risk factors for violent behaviour in men and women and in particular on the role of rejection sensitivity in physically aggressive behaviour. In order to examine these constructs, the thesis includes six chapters. Following a review of the literature, a rationale was provided for the creation of an amended measure of rejection sensitivity as Downey and Feldman’s (1996) Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire was not suitable for the purposes of the current thesis. Hence, a series of validation studies were conducted in Chapter 2 to test and develop a revised measure of rejection sensitivity that would be applicable to a wider range of intimate relationships (dating, cohabiting and married) and contexts. The study reported in Chapter 3, investigated the role of rejection sensitivity, hostile attributions and attachment patterns in the etiology of intimate partner violence. This study provided preliminary support for insecure attachment and negative attributions as the link between expectations of rejection and intimate partner violence, with a stronger link for male-perpetrated violence compared to female-perpetrated violence. Consistent with the marital violence literature, when mediator and moderator relationships existed, these occurred predominantly in married relationships (as opposed to dating or defacto relationships). The studies reported in Chapters 4 and 5 built on the foundations of Chapter 3 by incorporating two constructs, the ‘overattribution bias’ and empathic accuracy into the investigation of the associations between rejection sensitivity and violence. Specifically, the study reported in Chapter 4 examined the decoding deficits and inferential biases of maritally-violent and maritally-violent rejection-sensitive men when interpreting their own partner’s messages whilst engaging in a laboratory-based decoding task. Overall, results showed that maritally-violent partner rejection-sensitive men were less accurate than were maritally non-violent partner rejection-sensitive men when interpreting their wives’ positive messages and more accurate when interpreting their wives’ negative messages. Likewise, maritally-violent rejection-sensitive men displayed an inferential bias to perceive their wives’ messages as being more negative, critical and rejecting in intent than did maritally non-violent rejection-sensitive men. In addition, maritally-violent men as a group were less accurate for their own partner’s positive and neutral messages than were maritally non-violent men and more accurate for their own wives’ negative messages than were maritally non-violent men. Finally, maritally-violent men tended to attribute their wives’ messages as being significantly more negative, critical and rejecting in intent than did maritally non-violent men. Overall, the data suggested that both rejection sensitivity and marital violence were key factors that were associated with married men’s decoding problems and biased interpretation of their own wives’ messages. In extending the previous findings, the study reported in Chapter 5 examined the decoding accuracy and inferential biases of both maritally-violent and maritally-violent rejection-sensitive men and women in relation to female strangers’ messages. There were no differences between maritally-violent rejection-sensitive women and maritally non-violent rejection-sensitive women on decoding deficits and inferential biases for female strangers. However, there was a trend for maritally-violent women to be more negatively biased than were maritally non-violent women when interpreting female strangers’ messages. Additionally, in contrast to the findings of Chapter 4, the data pointed to independent relationships among rejection sensitivity, violence and married men’s decoding deficits and biases for female strangers’ messages. In particular, there were no differences in decoding deficits or inferential biases between maritally violent rejection-sensitive and maritally non-violent rejection-sensitive men when decoding female strangers’ messages. Instead, the data revealed that maritally-violent men were poor decoders of female strangers’ positive messages compared to maritally non-violent men and maritally-violent women. In relation to negative messages, maritally-violent men were more accurate for female strangers’ negative messages than were maritally non-violent men. Maritally violent men had the highest decoding accuracy for negative messages. Maritally-violent men also tended to attribute female strangers’ messages as being significantly more negative, critical and rejecting in intent than did maritally non-violent men and maritally-violent women. Finally, the results showed that maritally-violent rejection-sensitive men’s decoding deficits and biases were relationship specific whereas maritally-violent men’s decoding deficits and cognitive biases were global deficits that extended to women other than the men’s wives. Implications of the findings were discussed, as well as the strengths and limitations of the study. The discussion concludes with implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research.

Suicide affects hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year. Despite many coordinated efforts to address this problem, in multiple domains, these numbers have risen over the last decade. The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide is a relatively recent theory that has received considerable attention and investigation. Perceived burdensomeness is one of the constructs from this theory. The belief that you are a burden on others is a robust predictor of suicidal ideation and, to a less understood extent, suicidal behavior. To my knowledge, few studies have looked at the factors that lead to perceived burdensomeness. This study was conducted to begin to address this gap in the literature. Attributional style, hopelessness, socially-prescribed perfectionism, and self-esteem were identified as potential vulnerability factors for perceived burdensomeness. One hundred twenty individuals were surveyed about these constructs and perceived burdensomeness. Participants were also asked to read three vignettes based on interviews with individuals with lived experiences related to suicide attempts. Following each vignette, participants were asked to report the level of perceived burdensomeness that they anticipated that they would feel in that situation as an additional analogue measure of perceived burdensomeness. It was found that attributional style, socially-prescribed perfectionism, and self-esteem predicted current levels of perceived burdensomeness. Self-esteem was the only variable that predicted analogue levels of perceived burdensomeness, beyond current levels of depression. This exploratory study has the potential to contribute to the literature by guiding and informing future research related to better understanding or reducing perceived burdensomeness.

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This study investigated the relationship between the depressive attributional style described by Beck and Seligman and elevation of mood. It was proposed that mood elevation would reduce the level of depression and, in addition, would reduce the number of negative attributions. The reduction of negative attributions was assumed to be a more cognitively mediated process and was proposed to occur subsequent to mood change. These assumptions are contrary to the current cognitive theories of depression and attribution which view attributional style as a prerequisite to both the development and reduction of depression. Subjects were 30 undergraduate students between the ages of 19 and 40 years old who volunteered to participate in the study. They were screened on the basis of demonstrated depression (13 and above on the Beck Inventory) and susceptibility to hypnosis (high susceptibility on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility) . Subjects were randcmly assigned to one of three groups; (1) hypnosis with mood elevation, (2) hypnosis with relaxation, and (3) no treatment control. The results supported the hypothesis that mood elevation would reduce level of depression. The mood elevation group demonstrated a lowering of depression. The effects of the treatment procedure did not appear until the fourth session. As anticipated, reduction in negative attributions did not precede or coincide with reduction in depression. It was not possible to determine the change in the attributional style of subject during the time period of this study. The results were discussed in terms of Bower's Associative Network Theory in which activation of mood facilitates the access to memories, behaviors, and interpretation of events which are congruent with the mood state.