The Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS) was developed to measure pervasive negative attitudes of a depressed person towards self, outside world, and future. The DAS follows Beck's construct of cognitive dysfunction. Two studies investigated the psychometric properties of the DAS and the relationship between cognition and affect in 300 normal graduate students and teachers. The first study examined internal consistency, test - retest reliability and correlation with the Beck Depression Inventory, the Profile of Moods States, and A Measure of Cognitive Distortions in Depression (hypothetical stories). In the second study, the original 100-item DAS was shortened by factor analysis to two 40-item parallel forms. The reliability of the two forms was confirmed, suggesting that future studies use the short rather than the 100-item version. In conclusion, preliminary findings indicated that negative cognitions are associated with depressed moods; furthermore, negative beliefs are more persistent than negative affect. The DAS (short version) is appended. (CP)