Depressed and non‐depressed psychiatric in‐patients and non‐depressed non‐psychiatric controls classified their performance on a verbal recognition task as either a success or a failure, and made attributions about the causes of their perceived success or failure. In all three groups, subjects who classified their performance as a success attributed their outcome more to internal and less to external factors than did subjects who classified their performance as a failure. These results suggest that depression and attributional style may not necessarily be related. Discussion centres on the idea that individuals' expectations of success can affect their subsequent attributions.