Effects of Attribution Based Verbal Persuasion and Imagery on SelfEfficacy of Adolescents Diagnosed with Major Depression

Authors

  • Gary D. Ellis
  • Marianne Maughan-Pritchett
  • Edward Ruddell

Keywords:

Self-efficacy, Attribution, Imagery

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of attribution based verbal persuasion and guided mental imagery on self-efficacy judgments, outcome judgments, generality of efficacy judgments, and performance of adolescent psychiatric patients playing a video game. Research participants were ninety adolescents who were in-patients at a psychiatric hospital. An independent groups, 3 X 3 experimental design was used. The levels of the verbal persuasion variable were (a) persuasion designed to promote internal and stable attributions, (b) ambiguous persuasion designed to yield external and unstable attributions, and (c) no persuasion.. The imagery variable included (a) imagery of a successful experience, (b) imagery of a failure experience, and (c) no imagery conditions. Dependent variables were measures of self-efficacy judgments, outcome judgments, generality of efficacy judgments, persistence at the task, and game score. Analysis of variance results revealed that research participants in the internal persuasion condition had significantly higher scores on the collection ofdependent variables, as compared to the other persuasion groups. Evidence of an effect of success imagery on level of self-efficacy was also present.


Issue

Section

Research Papers