Abstract
Objectives. To identify the attributional style of clients presenting with anger management problems and to determine whether this differs from that of depressed clients and non-clients. Design. A between-subjects design was used. The independent variable was the nature of the clinical group: anger management problems, clinically depressed, and non-clinical controls. The six dependent variables were: level of depression, level of self esteem, explicit attributional style, implicit attributional style, level of anger, and responses to an anger provoking incident. Method. The study compared 20 adults with anger management problems with a group of 17 adults with depression and 20 adults with no mental health problems. The groups were matched for age, gender and employment status. Attributional style was measured using the Internal, Personal and Situational Attribution Questionnaire (IPSAQ; Kinderman & Bentall, 1996) and the Pragmatic Inference Task (PIT; Winters & Neale, 1985). Results. There was a significant interaction between group, attribution and event on the IPSAQ. Conclusions. The results indicate an attributional style for clients with anger management difficulties that is similar to those clients with depression for negative events, but is similar to controls for positive events. In terms of further research, other studies of this type are recommended to see if these findings are stable. If this proves to be the case, then longitudinal studies are recommended to determine the cause-effect relationship. In addition, studies are advised to determine the links between depression and anger difficulties and how this informs us about the attributional style in mental health problems more broadly.