An investigation into the levels of self-esteem, depression and attributional style in individuals who experience auditory hallucinations that they believe to be malevolent

Abstract

Individuals who experience auditory hallucinations that they believe to be malevolent exhibit moderate levels of depression and high self-esteem on self-report measures. It was hypothesised that these individuals would present a self-serving bias (i.e. a tendency to attribute positive events to themselves) on obvious measures of attributional style such as the Attributional Style Questionnaire. This type of bias has previously been observed in individuals who experience persecutory delusions on obvious measures of attributional style but not the less obvious Pragmatic Inference Task. However, such a bias was not observed. Individuals experiencing auditory hallucinations tended to attribute negative events to themselves on both obvious measures of attributional style and the less obvious Pragmatic Inference Task. They therefore showed a cognitive style resembling that of the control group suffering from depression, as opposed to the normal control group. The results indicate that individuals who experience auditory hallucinations maintain high self-esteem through a mechanism other than biases in attributional style. The implication being that the mechanism in operation is somewhat different to the one proposed for individuals with persecutory delusions. Possibilities for an alternative mechanism are discussed.

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