Camille B. Wortman

Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": Severe accident victims react to their lot.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between victims attributions of causality for their accidents and their ability to cope with severe misfortune. A total of 29 individuals who had been paralyzed in serious accidents were intensively interviewed. Both quantitative and open-ended questions were used to elicit attributions of blame and causality by respondents; coping scores were obtained from a social worker and a nurse familiar with each respondents case. Findings suggested that blaming another and feeling that one could have avoided the accident were successful predictors of poor coping; self-blame was a successful predictor of good coping. The question, Why me? was posed by all respondents, and 28 of the 29 related specific hypotheses that they entertained to explain why the accident had happened to them. Their responses seemed to illustrate the respondents need for meaning in explaining the selective incidence of the accident.

Responses to Uncontrollable Outcomes: An Integration of Reactance Theory and the Learned Helplessness Model1

Publisher Summary This chapter investigates how individuals react when they are unable to exert control over their environment—when they are unable to have options or reach goals that are important to them, or when they are forced to endure outcomes that they would not voluntarily choose. It reviews a number of theories that have focused on the importance of control over ones environment. Some investigators have suggested that the perception of inability to exert control over ones environment can even result in sudden death from coronary disease or other factors. Furthermore, feelings of lack of control have also been viewed as a cause of many types of antisocial behaviors. There are two theories that make rather specific predictions concerning reactions to lack or loss of control: Brehms theory of psychological reactance and Seligmans learned helplessness model. The chapter discusses these theoretical orientations in some detail. Because these two formulations appear to make contradictory predictions, it attempts to integrate them into a single theoretical statement. The chapter also reviews the relevant evidence, and discusses a number of unresolved theoretical problems.

Attributions of causality and reactions to uncontrollable outcomes

Abstract The experiment tested the hypothesis that the stress experienced by a person who is unable to control aversive stimulation is not a function of lack of control per se, but of the attribution of causality that (s)he makes for failure to exert control. Subjects were given a problem-solving task, and were told that they could prevent aversive noise bursts by correctly solving the problems. Subjects then received false feedback that they had done either well or poorly on the problems. In addition, failing subjects received information that led them to attribute their performance either to their own lack of ability or to situational factors (task difficulty). Subjects who attributed their failure to their own incompetence felt considerably more stress than subjects who made situational attributions. In fact, the latter subjects experienced no more stress than subjects who were successful in controlling the stimulation. Surprisingly, subjects whose attributions for performance led them to feel personally incompetent performed better than the remaining subjects both on problems administered in the same situation, and on problems administered in a new and different situation. The implications of the results for future helplessness studies and for the learned helplessness model were discussed.

Self-disclosure: an attributional perspective.

This experiment examined the effect of timing of an intimate disclosure and assignment of responsibility for the event disclosed on interpersonal attraction. Subjects were induced to interact with a confederate who in all cases revealed something quite personal about himself. The disclosure occurred either early or near the end of a 10-minute conversation. The confederate accepted responsibility for the event disclosed, did not mention responsibility, or assigned responsibility to external factors. Negative traits were assigned to the early disclosure, and he was liked significantly less than the late discloser. The results are explained in terms of differential attributions made to early and late disclosures. The results for the assignment of responsibility variable were surprising: The confederate who accepted responsibility for the event disclosed elicited more negative reactions than the confederate who blamed other factors or who did not mention responsibility. Some possible reasons for this unexpected finding are discussed.

Some determinants of public acceptance of randomized control group experimental designs.

This study explores some factors that might influence public attitudes about social experiments. Subjects read a supposedly real news account of a medical experiment in which the scarcity of the treatment employed and the amount of scientific justification for the experiment were experimentally varied. As expected, subjects reacted negatively to the experiment when explicitly informed that while there were adequate resources for all participants to receive the treatment, some participants were being deprived of treatment for scientific purposes. Contrary to expectations, subjects explicitly told that resources were scarce and that some participants would go without the treatment in any case, were less favorable toward the medical experiment and its administrators than subjects for whom scarcity was not mentioned. It was also found that the publics opinions were significantly improved when the scientific necessity for randomization was emphasized, especially when the potential usefulness of proven results was stressed. Few differences were found in comparing male and female responses, although female readers did evidence greater dissatisfaction with moral aspects of the experiment. Implications of the results for administrators of social programs are discussed.