Accessibility of causal explanations for future positive and negative events in adolescents with anxiety and depression

Anxious and depressed adults' pessimism about future events has been shown to be underpinned by their ability to think of reasons why future events would or would not happen (see, e.g., Byrne and MacLeod, 1997). This study sought to extend this finding to adolescents by investigating the accessibility of explanations given for future events in adolescents with elevated anxiety and depression scores. A school sample of 11-17 year olds (N = 123) participated. Participants completed self-report measures of anxiety depression and positive and negative affect. In addition they were given a set of potential future positive and negative events and asked to provide reasons as to why the events would (pro reasons) or would not (con reasons) happen. Anxious participants, relative to controls, generated significantly more pro relative to con reasons for negative events happening and showed a non-significant trend towards the opposite pattern for positive events. Depressed participants showed clear differences from controls in their pattern of accessible explanations for both negative events and positive events. Correlational analysis showed that positive and negative affect had differential relationships to positive and negative cognitions concerning future outcomes. The results suggest that the processes that underlie pessimism in depressed and anxious adults also operate in relatively depressed and anxious adolescents. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.