Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Explanatory style
Summary
Explanatory style is a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative.
This aspect covers the degree to which a person attributes the cause of an event to internal or
external sources. An optimist might attribute a bad experience to a stroke of bad luck whereas a pessimist might unreasonably assume it is their fault or punishment. A person might also attribute the responsibility of their actions to external forces in a maladaptive, unhealthy way (e.g. "I had no choice but to get violent.")
This aspect covers characteristics considered stable versus unstable (across time). An optimist would tend to define his or her failures as unstable (I just didn't study enough for this particular test) whereas a pessimist might think, for example, "I'm never good at tests".
This distinction covers global versus local and/or specific and the extent of the effect. A pessimist might, for example, think that "Everywhere there is misery" and an optimist think that, "I have had dealings mostly with honest people".
People who generally tend to blame themselves for negative events, believe that such events will continue indefinitely, and let such events affect many aspects of their lives display what is called a pessimistic explanatory style. Conversely, people who generally tend to blame outside forces for negative events, believe that such events will end soon, and do not let such events affect too many aspects of their lives display what is called an optimistic explanatory style.
Some research has suggested a pessimistic explanatory style may be correlated with depression and physical illness. The concept of explanatory style encompasses a wide range of possible responses to both positive and negative occurrences, rather than a black-white difference between optimism and pessimism. Also, an individual does not necessarily show a uniform explanatory style in all aspects of life, but may exhibit varying responses to different types of events.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.