(Non)depressed persons’ cognitive and affective reactions to (un)successful interpersonal influence

Weiner's (1986) theory of attribution and affect was juxtaposed with the literature on depression in order to develop hypotheses about the attributional and emotional reactions of depressed and nondepressed persons to three different outcomes of an interpersonal interaction. An experiment was conducted in which depressed and nondepressed participants, who attempted to exert interpersonal influence, met with success, ambiguity, or failure. The results showed that depressed persons reacted to success and ambiguity in a way that was both attributionally and affectively similar to the nondepressed. However, interpersonal failure provoked considerably more negative affect in persons who were depressed than those who were not depressed.