Explanatory Style

“Success is simply a matter of luck, ask any failure”

Earl Wilson

Explanatory Style

People have an explanation for why the environment has scheduled their reinforcements in a certain way.

Your habitual way of explaining events is your explanatory style. It is a habit of thought learned in childhood and adolescence.

Consists of two parts

a) Attribution theory – the way people think about causes of success and failure

b) Reinforcement Schedule

There are three dimensions of an Explanatory Style.

Permanance (PmB)

Permanant Pessimistic Style (PmB)

This determines how long you give up for. If you give up easily, then you believe the causes of bad events are permanent, that bad events will always persist and will always affect your life. You think about bad things in terms of always and never. (An example of Black and White Thinking) This is a permanent pessimistic style. Failure makes everyone temporarily helpless. It hurts, but for most people it goes away, but for some it lasts for days or perhaps months.

The optimistic style.(PmG)

You believe good events have permanent causes. ‘Sometimes’ and ‘lately’ are the hallmarks of optimistic thinking about bad events.

Pessimists name these events ’sometimes’.

Pervasiveness: Specific vs. Universal.

The degree of pervasiveness determines how many areas of your life are affected. If you make universal explanations you give up on everything if one thing goes wrong.

If you make a specific explanation, you carry on in other areas of life regardless.

The optimistic style (PvG): Bad events have specific causes and good events enhance everything.

The pessimistic style (PvB): Bad events have universal causes and good events have specific causes.

HOPE

Finding temporary specific causes for bad events is the art of hope. Temporary causes limit helplessness in time and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation. Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.

Measure your Level of Hope.

Personalization: Internal vs. External

When bad things happen we can blame ourselves (internalize) or other people or circumstances (externalize).

Low self esteem is a consequence of blaming ourselves when we fail. We think we are worthless, talentless, and unlovable. Low self esteem comes from an internal style for bad events.

If we blame external events we do not lose self esteem when bad things occur to us.

The optimistic style is internal and people with this tend to believe they cause good things to happen and like themselves better.

To learn techniques for becoming more optimistic see Optimism and Schema Theory