Explanatory Styles and Their Role in Perpetuating Resiliency

How you can move to an optimistic mindset that improves success rates.

It is an everyday occurrence that we encounter good or adverse events that beg for an explanation. This essay will help you identify explanatory styles that do not serve you and suggest ways to change your interpretations in a more productive direction.

Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania was one of the first to write about explanatory style when evaluating events.

He created a three-part explanation of how we understand the meaning of events in our lives.

Explanatory Style

Someone’s attributional style, also known as their explanatory style, describes how you tend, often unconsciously, to explain various life events to yourself.

An explanatory style is a person’s way of explaining events that happen to them. It is a habit of thought learned in childhood/adolescence.

Seligman (1990) says, “your explanatory style stems directly from your place in the world — whether you think you are valuable and deserving or worthless and helpless.”

Types of Explanation

When someone forms an explanation, it involves three factors:

Whether you see the cause as internal or external

For example, I am currently trying to change my posture and walk with my head up high and my shoulders back. But no matter how hard I try, I keep failing to make these changes last more than a few steps.

I explain to myself that I must focus on my body position and not think of anything else to be successful. Inevitably, this leads to a loss of concentration and a lapsing back to my old, unsatisfactory posture.

I see this problem as internal, an inability to focus on enacting the desire for a better posture. Hopefully, I will find an answer related to changing the inner script.

Do you see the situation as stable or unstable?

Do you see the event as unchangeable vs. changeable or permanent vs. temporary? In the posture example, I see this situation as temporary or unstable. I hope that, with practice, I will improve my posture, though that has yet to happen.

Does the event have a more global effect on your life, or is it specific to your local situation?

For example, if I thought my inability to change my posture was due to poor self-discipline and was unchangeable, this would be a global explanation. A specific local explanation would be: ‘I can fix this with a different approach or more practice.”

Go for an Optimistic Explanatory Style

If you fail to change a bad habit or addiction, you may lack an optimistic explanatory style.

Researchers point out that when something happens in our lives, our explanatory style is part of how we process it; we think of the meaning we attach to it and whether we see it as a threat or challenge. It impacts both our stress level and resiliency.

Hence, we must seek an optimistic explanatory style in dealing with adverse events: make it local, unstable, and external.

Such an explanation is optimistic because the cause is specific to that event only; the cause of the event is short-lived, and the cause only affects you and no one else.

Seligman believes that explanatory styles can change with attention and practice. He has worked for years with the military to help soldiers with their explanatory style when stationed in areas with high conflict. He notes that “habits of thinking need not be forever.” The payoff is lower stress levels and resiliency.

Make the Change

How can you change your explanations to a more favorable optimistic position? Awareness of your thinking styles is an excellent first step.

Your thoughts are critical to whether your behavior is helpless or masterful. Thoughts can produce emotional responses that catch you like a ‘helpless fish,’ as Marone says in her book on learned helplessness.

Though you cannot always control your emotions, you can control the thoughts that trigger those emotions.

The lesson is to pay attention to your self-talk; make sure your thoughts remain positive and supportive. This awareness will make you less vulnerable to taking the bait of a negative belief system and explanatory style.

Even without an explanation, perseverance is the right path. Angela Duckworth has the right idea about what she calls grit. Grit is defined as “…passion and perseverance for long-term goals….”

“ In an academic environment that teaches grit and fosters growth, students can learn to persist. Those who believe intelligence is fixed and cannot be changed exert less effort to succeed. Students who persevere when faced with challenges and adversity seem to have what Angela Duckworth calls grit.”

Summary

Someone’s attributional style, also known as their explanatory style, describes how you tend, often unconsciously, to explain various life events to yourself. Seligman (1990) says, “your explanatory style stems directly from your place in the world — whether you think you are valuable and deserving or worthless and helpless.”

When someone forms an explanation, it involves three factors: Whether they see the cause as internal or external. A specific local explanation would be: ‘I can fix this with a different approach or more practice.” If you fail to change a bad habit or addiction, you may lack an optimistic explanatory style.

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