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Explanatory style is a psychological attribute that affects an individual’s personality and mental states. It has three key aspects: personal, permanent, and pervasive. Pessimistic explanatory style can lead to stress, mental illness, and physical illness, while an optimistic explanatory style can cultivate learned optimism. Explanatory style is largely a product of an individual’s locus of control.
Explanatory style is the psychological attribute involving how individuals explain to themselves the events that occur in their lives. Explanations can be positive or negative and end up having a profound effect on an individual’s personality. Mental states of cynicism, pessimism, and optimism are also strongly influenced by one’s explanatory style.
Modern psychology has identified three key aspects of this attribute: personal, permanent and pervasive. The personal element concerns how an individual views the cause of a given event; she may see the event as something entirely her own doing, or as something caused by external stimuli, totally outside herself. In the permanent aspect of the explanatory style, the individual explains to himself the extent of the cause; he could see it as fixed and permanent or as transitory and a product of chance. The pervasive component involves the extent to which an individual explains the effects of the situation to himself; he can see it as a problem that permeates all the problems in his life, or he can see it as a fleeting result of a chance cause.
Everyday colloquial speech contains countless examples of explanatory style. Statements like “It was all my fault” and “Nothing ever goes my way” are great examples of pessimistic explanatory style. Phrases like “This too shall pass” and “Easy come, easy go” are illustrations of an optimistic explanatory style.
Evidence suggests that pessimistic explanatory style plays a large role in the development of stress, mental illness, and even physical illness. Cognitive therapy practice seeks to remedy mental problems by changing the patient’s negative ways of thinking, often by addressing the patient’s pessimistic explanatory style. Left unchecked, pessimism can lead to learned helplessness, a psychological theory in which an individual feels they have no control over the outcome of a situation, resulting in depression or other mental illness. Conversely, an individual with an optimistic explanatory style may cultivate learned optimism, which involves an individual questioning any negative explanation one gives.
Explanatory style is largely a product of an individual’s locus of control, a social psychological term that indicates how accurately an individual believes they control the events that affect them. People who have a high locus of control view events in their lives as products of their own thinking or behavior. Those with a lower locus of control believe they have no power over the events of their lives and are victims of circumstance.
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