Explaining why negative events will happen to oneself: Parasuicides are pessimistic because they can't see any reason not to be

Abstract

Parasuicides ( N = 18) were compared with matched controls ( N = 18) on their subjective probability judgements for nine future, negative, self-relevant events. Prior to the probability judgements, subjects were asked to think of reasons why the events would or would not happen. The ease with which they were able to think of reasons was assessed by time taken to think of the first reason, number of different reasons given in 90 seconds and a subjective rating of difficulty. Relative to controls, parasuicides judged negative events to be more likely. They also showed evidence of finding it more difficult to think of why those events might not happen, but were no different from controls in their ability to think of reasons why the events would happen. The effect of thinking of reasons against negative events happening was to reduce the pessimism of parasuicides. It is suggested that parasuicide subjects may not actively anticipate future negative outcomes, but when presented with the possibilities, they judge them to be likely because of an inability to think of positive aspects of themselves or their circumstances which would prevent those events happening.

Anxiety, Depression, and Explanation‐based Pessimism for Future Positive and Negative Events

“…Increasing the accessibility of con reasons for negative events also led to a significant reduction in the perceived likelihood of those events in the worriers, supporting a causal link between explanation accessibility and likelihood judgements. A similar finding has been reported by MacLeod and Tarbuck (1994) in the case of the pessimism shown by parasuicidal individuals.…”

Factors Associated with Suicide Attempts in Female Inmates: The Hegemony of Hopelessness

“…To increase the clinical utility of this construct, it is important to know which aspects of hopelessness are linked with suicidal behavior (MacLeod et al). Studies have found that recent suicide attempters do not anticipate a larger number of negative events; rather, they anticipate fewer positive events and are less apt to devise reasons against the occurrence of negative events (MacLeod et al; MacLeod & Tarbuck, 1994). Therefore, one mechanism that links suicide with hopelessness may be an expectation bias against positive events, perhaps associated with general cognitive inflexibility.…”

Depressed people are not less motivated by personal goals but are more pessimistic about attaining them.

“…For example, MacLeod and Tarbuck (1994) found that parasuicides' likelihood judgments were consistent with the relative number of reasons that they generated for and against future events. In another study, dysphoric adolescents reported more reasons for goal failure and fewer reasons for goal success than non-dysphoric adolescents (Dickson and MacLeod, 2006).…”

“…The hopelessness theory of depression suggests that a diathesis marked by stable and global attributions for negative events interacts with such events to lower expectancies for desired outcomes and increase expectancies for undesired outcomes (Abramson et al, Personal goals systems and depression 6 1989), producing hopelessness that may develop into depression. Most clinical research has focused on expectancies and controllability of hypothetical events rather than personally meaningful goal outcomes (e.g., MacLeod & Tarbuck, 1994). However, because goal pursuit typically requires sustained activity in order to overcome obstacles, expectancy and controllability beliefs are likely to be especially important in determining how much effort a person mobilizes and how likely they are to be successful (Carver & Scheier, 1998).…”