Aim: To study student's negative thoughts with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).
Procedure: 40 participants were told to participate in group course then their changes in a number of core beliefs, number of automatic thoughts, mood and alleviation of depression was studied.
Results:
- At first, the average on Beck's BDI scores was not very different. However, the result soon showed that BDI-II scores "significantly correlated with the number of automatic thoughts, the number of core beliefs and different types of core beliefs in both time periods."
implication: Beck's assumptions that negative thought content characterizes depression is correct

Mainly believes in: depression was instituted by one's view of oneself, instead of one having a negative view of oneself due to depression.
- Negative views causes depression
Developed the Sociotrophy -Autonomy Scale
- A scale used to identify self-feelings that could lead up to depression
Beck's Negative Cognitive Triad
- Negative thoughts about the world, oneself and future classifies the negative thoughts that lead to depression
Beck's Depressive Inventory : Another way of measuring negative thoughts based on Beck's theory that individuals with negative thoughts interpret things negatively and feel hopeless towards their future and this can lead to depressive symptoms.
Beck also believed that the subject's thoughts can be grouped to different categories
- Overgeneralization: generalize one failure to many other situations
- Abstraction: Sucess are ignored and only failures are noted
- Polar Reasoning: failure outweighs success always.

Evaluation of Beck's Theory

Testable: Yes- many studies has been done on Beck's theory
Empirical support: The findings of many studies back up Beck's theories
Applicable: This is applicable to understanding of depression
Controlled: The studies on Beck's theories are usually not very experimental due to the need to self-evaluate in cognitive psychology
Unbiased: Mostly unbiased except for cultural bias as most studies on Beck's theory was done in the U.S.
Predictability: The theory can be used to predict one's risk of depression.

Limitations:

Characteristics of depression were too broad, might have been related to environmental factors, not internal
Negative thoughts do not always cause depression
Cultural bias-mostly Western culture studied
Hard to define-bidirectional ambiguity
No clear boundary between just negative thoughts and depressive disorder
Does not take biological factors into account

Strengths:

UNDERSTANDING DEPRESSION