ABSTRACT
Another aspect of differences between individuals concerns the role of beliefs or attributions about the way the world works, about sources of danger, and about one's efficacy in the world. Beliefs that might contribute to heightened distress reports or experiences can include attributions that one is being deliberately harmed, attributions arising out of long-standing individual beliefs about emotionality, and attributions arising out of cognitive limitations, memory impairments, or mental disorders such as delusions. Other attributions may be generated out of the normal efforts of the brain to bring order out of chaos even in an absence of important information, or out of beliefs about personal control or the general benevolence of the world. In addition, some deliberately false attributions are made out of an attempt to defraud others. There is evidence that PTSD is associated with a high frequency of irrational beliefs in general CRyer, Woods, & Boudewyns, 1991). What is the evidence about the relations between more specific beliefs and PTSD?
