Beck's cognitive theory and the reformulated learned helplessness model suggest that there is a negative idiosyncratic cognitive style that characterizes the way depressed individuals appraise events which is causally associated with depression. Although a few researchers have recognized the importance of examining appraisals of everyday events, no study has investigated the relationship of everyday event appraisals to depression. Therefore, using a cross-lagged panel correlational design, 197 college students cognitively appraised a carefully defined set of ordinary (everyday) events. Results revealed that depressed subjects appraise the causes of unpleasant events as more global and stable than nondepressed subjects. Similarly, depressed subjects appraise these unpleasant events as more important and show a higher level of characterological blame. Evenhandedness analyses suggest that depressed subjects, in comparison to nondepressed subjects, make similar global and stable attributional ratings for unpleasant and pleasant events. This pattern of evenhandedness for globality was inconsistent with current explanations of the phenomenon since depressed subjects were more global than nondepressed subjects in attributions for pleasant ordinary events. Finally, a causal relationship between cognition and depression was not found since the null hypothesis of spuriousness could not be rejected. (Author)