Pessimistic explanatory style moderates the effect of stress on physical illness

Explanatory style is a cognitive personality variable that reflects the tendency to explain bad events involving the self with causes that are internal to the self, stable across time, and global in effect. The attribution reformulation of helplessness theory predicts that stress coupled with a pessimistic explanatory style leads to negative outcomes, including physical illness, among at-risk individuals. This longitudinal study of 198 college students examined whether pessimistic explanatory style interacts with perceived stress to predict subsequent illness, even when controlling for baseline illness. Results confirmed this hypothesis.