<P> Attribution theory has had a big application in clinical psychology . Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale developed a theory of the depressive attributional style, claiming that individuals who tend to attribute their failures to internal, stable and global factors are more vulnerable to clinical depression . The Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) has been developed to assess whether individuals have the depressogenic attributional style . However, the ASQ has been criticized, with some researchers preferring to use a technique called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE) in which an individual's ordinary writings are analysed to assess whether s / he is vulnerable to the depressive attributional style . </P> <P> The concept of learned helplessness emerged from animal research in which psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier discovered that dogs classically conditioned to an electrical shock which they could not escape, subsequently failed to attempt to escape an avoidable shock in a similar situation . They argued that learned helplessness applied to human psychopathology . In particular, individuals who attribute negative outcomes to internal, stable and global factors reflect a view in which they have no control over their situation . It is suggested that this aspect of not attempting to better a situation exacerbates negative mood, and may lead to clinical depression and related mental illnesses . </P> <P> When people try to make attributions about another's behavior, their information focuses on the individual . Their perception of that individual is lacking most of the external factors which might affect the individual . The gaps tend to be skipped over and the attribution is made based on the perception information most salient . The most salient perceptual information dominates a person's perception of the situation . </P> <P> For individuals making behavioral attributions about themselves, the situation and external environment are entirely salient, but their own body and behavior are less so . This leads to the tendency to make an external attribution in regard to their own behavior . </P>

Common sense is a poor source of psychological information because