Behav. Res. l-her. Vol. 28, No. 6. pp. 523-529. 1990 C005-7967/90 S3.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright Q 1990 Pergamon Press plc EXPLANATORY STYLE AND GAMBLING: HOW PESSIMISTS RESPOND TO LOSING WAGERS GORDON D. ATLAS’ and CHRISTOPHER PETERSON~ ‘Department of Psychology, Alfred University, Alfred, NY 14802 and ‘University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, U.S.A. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW (Received 29 June 1990) Summary-Fifty-three patrons of a hariless racing track completed two measures of explanatory style prior to an afternoon’s races. One measure assessed general explanatory style, using bad events taken from the Attributional Style Questionnaire, and the other measure assessed betting-specific explanatory style, using bad events specific to harness race betting. Subjects then kept a diary during the first eight races. After each race, they reported how much they had bet, whether they had won or lost, the major cause of the outcome, their confidence about winning future bets, and whether they were ruminating about past or future races. Explanatory style assessed in both ways had similar correlates. Explanatory style predicted the specific attributions made by subjects for losses. Pessimistic explanatory style (internal + stable + global attributions) predicted rumination following a lost bet, but it was unrelated to expressed contidence. Rumination after a loss was in turn associated with larger wagers on subsequent races and a tendency toward less successful wagers. These results clarify one way in which pessimistic explanatory style results in helplessness, and suggest a path by which problematic gambling may develop. Explanatory style is a cognitive personality variable reflecting how people habitually explain the causes of bad events (Peterson & Seligman, 1984). It is generally measured with the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; Peterson, Semmel, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky & Seligman, 1982), which presents respondents with hypothetical bad events and asks them to provide the cause of the event occurring to them. Some people explain bad events by pointing to factors within themselves that are chronic and pervasive (e.g. “I’m a loser” whereas others explain negative outcomes in terms of circumscribed causes outside themselves (e.g. “It was an accident”). We refer to the former people as pessimistic or helpless, and to the latter as optimistic or efficacious .(Peterson, Seligman & Vaillant, 1988). According to theory and research, pessimistic individuals are more likely than their optimistic counterparts to respond with passivity and low morale to actual bad events. The initial work on explanatory style emerged from the reformulated learned helplessness model of depression (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978). Much of the research on explanatory style, in fact, has focused on its relationship to depression (Sweeney, Anderson & Bailey, 1986). On the basis of a series of studies in various contexts with different populations, pessimistic explanatory style has been established as a risk factor for depression (Peterson C?Z Seligman, 1984). More recently, though, work on explanatory style has been extended in two directions. Researchers have begun to examine the effects of pessimistic explanatory style in various domains. For example, college students’ explanatory style has been shown to affect their academic performance, even when measures of scholastic aptitude are held constant (Peterson & Barrett, 1987). Pessimistic individuals working in sales stay for shorter amounts of time at their jobs, and are less effective than their ‘optimistic’ counterparts (Seligman & Schulman, 1986). Another approach has been to examine the physical effects of pessimistic explanatory style. Here, pessimistic explanatory style has been found to be a risk factor for poor physical health (Peterson, 1988; Peterson & Seligman, 1987). Some evidence suggests, in fact, that one’s explanatory style may even have an impact upon longevity (Peterson et al., 1988). The reformulated learned helplessness model has assumed that these consequences of pessimistic explanatory style have their source in how an individual responds to uncontrollable bad events. Pessimists presumably respond to these situations with maladaptive passivity (Seligman, 1975). By viewing the bad event as both global and also stable, they enlarge the difficulty and are unable to rebound, whereas their optimistic counterparts respond with renewed effort and perseverance. 523