Causal attributions shape the formation of novel ability self-beliefs (opens in new tab)

Healthy individuals typically attribute success to internal and failure to external factors, while people with depression and low self-esteem tend to do the opposite. At the same time, depression and low self-esteem are associated with negatively biased self-related learning and self-beliefs. Here, we used a validated self-related learning task to investigate how internal versus external attributions of performance feedback affect the formation of self-beliefs about ability and how these proc...