In plain language
Some people habitually explain bad events as their own fault (“it’s me, it’s permanent, it affects everything”) and dismiss good events as dumb luck — a pattern psychologists call a pessimistic explanatory style. This style is a well-known risk factor for depression, but almost no research had asked how it shapes a teenager’s social world. This study followed 719 Australian high school students across four years (Grades 7 to 10), measuring explanatory style, sadness, peer-rated likeability, and the quantity and quality of their social support networks.
Cross-lagged analyses across the four waves of data revealed a two-way street. Adolescents with a pessimistic explanatory style went on to have less social support — both in how many people they could count on and how satisfied they were with that support — even after accounting for the support they started with. In the other direction, low social support, and specifically low support from family rather than friends, predicted teenagers becoming more pessimistic over time.
Crucially, the researchers ruled out two rival explanations. Pessimistic teens were indeed rated as slightly less likeable by peers, but likeability could not account for the loss of support; nor could sadness. The authors conclude that pessimistic adolescents may come to feel unable to influence their social worlds in positive ways — a state they call “learned social hopelessness” — and consequently stop taking the actions needed to build and keep supportive relationships. An unsupportive family feeding pessimism, and pessimism eroding support, may form a downward spiral worth targeting in interventions.
Key findings
- Pessimistic explanatory style in Grades 7 and 9 predicted lower quantity and quality of social support in Grades 9 and 10, even after controlling for earlier levels of support.
- The influence ran both ways: lower social support predicted increases in pessimistic explanatory style, and it was low family support specifically — not friend support — that drove future pessimism.
- Pessimistic adolescents were rated as somewhat less likeable by peers, but likeability could not explain the link between explanatory style and declining social support.
- Sadness also failed to explain the link: explanatory style predicted future social support even after controlling for sadness, and predicted future sadness even after controlling for support.
- Social support quantity increased from Grade 8 to Grade 10 for both sexes, and girls reported more and higher-quality support than boys throughout.
- The authors propose that a downward spiral of unsupportive families, growing pessimism, and eroding support may leave some adolescents with “learned social hopelessness” — the belief that they are powerless to create anything positive in their social worlds.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., & Heaven, P. C. L. (2008). Learned social hopelessness: The role of explanatory style in predicting social support during adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49(12), 1279–1286. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01950.x
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2008learned,
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Heaven, Patrick C. L.},
title = {Learned social hopelessness: The role of explanatory style in predicting social support during adolescence},
journal = {Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry},
year = {2008},
volume = {49},
number = {12},
pages = {1279--1286},
doi = {10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01950.x}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.