Can pessimism and its consequences be measured across historical periods and cultures? One tool for measuring pessimism is the habitual way people explain the events that befall them, their "explanatory style" as found in archival documents. One way to measure the consequences of pessimism is to observe the symptoms of learned helplessness--passivity, poor achievement, and depressive signs--as they are found in the historical record. With these tools we can try both to test theories of explanatory style and to predict real-world behavior over historical periods and across cultures. In this article, we first present the theoretical background and describe our tools. In doing so, we detail a new method, the content analysis of verbatim explanations (CAVE), which allows blind, reliable ratings of archival material for explanatory style. Then we present three brief examples: President Johnson and the Vietnam War, prediction of who will win modern presidential elections, and pessimism in East and West Berlin. Our story begins with explanatory style and its relation to learned helplessness.
Explanatory S t y l ePsychologists have frequently argued that causal beliefs affect behavior (see reviews by Harvey & Weary, 1984;Heider, 1958;Kelley, 1973;Kelley & Michela, 1980;Kelly, 1955). One approach taken by researchers studying causal explanations is to ask if individuals differ in their habitual style of explaining the events that befall them (e.g., Ickes & Layden, 1978;Peterson & Seligman, 1984). If so, then explanatory style becomes an individual difference of consequence. All the behaviors and outcomes affected by particular explanations may be influenced by explanatory style, which helps to determine the actual causal explanations offered in particular situations.The reformulation of the learned helplessness model accords central status to causal explanations and explanatory style (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; see also Miller &Norman, 1979, andRoth, 1980). The reformulated model proposes that causal beliefs affect the nature of helplessness following bad events (Abramson et al., 1978). As such, they predict a potent psychological state, one that may underlie failure (Dweck & Reppucci, 1973;Peterson & Barrett, 1987), depression , illness and disease (Peterson, Seligman, & Vaillant, 1988;Schmale, 1972), and even death (Jemmott & Locke, 1984).According to the reformulation, one critical factor that contributes to where and when the symptoms of helplessness will occur is the particular causal explanation made by the individual for bad events. When failure occurs, a person asks why it happened. Certain answers to this question lead to pervasive helplessness, whereas others do not. Three dimensions of causal explanation are claimed relevant. First, causal explanations may refer to factors that are stable across time or unstable. The more enduring the cause, the more long-lasting the helplessness following bad events. Second, causal explanations may refer to global factors present in a variety of domains or to spec...
