Self-blame is a cognitive process in which an individual attributes the occurrence of a stressful event to oneself. The direction of blame often has implications for individuals' emotions and behaviors during and following stressful situations.Janoff-Bulman, R. (1979). Characterological versus behavioral self-blame: Inquiries into depression and rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(10), 1798-1809. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.10.1798Balzarotti, S., Biassoni, F., Villani, D., Prunas, A., & Velotti, P. (2016). Individual differences in cognitive emotion regulation: Implications for subjective and psychological well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 17(1), 125-143. doi:10.1007s12144-016-9421-7 Self-blame is a common reaction to stressful events and has certain effects on how individuals adapt. Types of self-blame are hypothesized to contribute to depression, and self-blame is a component of self-directed emotions like guilt and self-disgust. Because of self-blame's commonality in response to stress and its role in emotion, self-blame should be examined using psychology's perspectives on stress and coping.Smith, C. A., & Kirby, L. D., (2011). Role of appraisal and emotion in coping and adaptation. In R. J. Contrada & A. Baum (Eds.). Handbook of Stress Science: Biology, Psychology, and Health. New York: Springer.
Self-blame and stress While conceptualizations of stress have differed, the most dominant accounts in current psychology are appraisal-based models of stress. These models define stress as a reaction to a certain type of subjective appraisal, done by an individual, of the circumstances he or she is in. Specifically, stress occurs when an individual decides that a factor in the environment puts demands on the individual beyond his or her current ability to deal with it. The process of rating situations as demanding or nondemanding is called appraisal, and this process can occur quickly and without conscious awareness. Appraisal models of stress are sometimes called "interactional" because the occurrence of stress depends on an interaction between characteristics of the person, especially goals, and the environmental situation.Folkman, S. (2011). Stress, health, and coping: Synthesis, commentary, and future directions. In S. Folkman (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Stress and Coping (pp. 453-462). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Only if the individual perceives a situation to threaten his or her goals does stress occur.Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer publishing company. This structure explains the fact that individuals often differ in their emotional and stress responses when they are presented with similar situations. Stress does not come from events themselves, but from the conflict of the event with an individual's goals. While researchers disagree about the time-course of appraisals, how appraisals are made, and the degree to which individuals differ in their appraisals, appraisal-models of stress are dominant in psychology. Appraisals may occur without conscious awareness. Stress itself is a systemic psychological state that includes a subjective "feel" and a motivational-component (the individual desires to reduce stress); some researchers consider stress to be a subset of or a closely related system to emotions, which likewise depend on appraisal and motivate behavior.
Once this appraisal has occurred, actions taken to reduce stress constitute coping processes. Coping can involve changes to the situation-environment relationship (changing the situation or the goals that led to stress appraisal), reducing the emotional consequences of a stress appraisal, or avoiding thinking about the stressful situation. Categorizations of types of coping vary between researchers.Stroebe, M. S. (2011). Coping with bereavement. In S. A. Folkman (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Stress, Health, and Coping (pp. 148-172). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Coping strategies differ in their effects on subjective well-being; for example, positive reappraisal is consistently found to be a correlate of higher subjective-well being, while distraction from stressors is typically a negative correlate of well-being. Coping behaviors constitute the moderating factor between events and circumstances on one hand and psychological outcomes, like well-being or mental disorders, on the other.Roesch, S. C., & Weiner, B. (2001). A meta-analytic review of coping with illness: Do causal attributions matter?. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 50(4), 205-219. Causal attributions of the event are a way to deal with the stress of an event, and so self-blame is a type of coping.Meyer, C. B., & Taylor, S. E. (1986). Adjustment to rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(6), 1226-1234. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.6.1226Resick, P. A. (1993). The psychological impact of rape. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 8(2), 223-255. doi:10.1177/088626093008002005 During and after traumatic events, individuals' appraisals affect how stressful the event is, their beliefs on what caused the event, meanings they may derive from the event, and changes they make in their future behavior.
Theories of self-blame
Characterological and behavioral self-blame A classification of self-blame into characterological and behavioral types has been proposed to distinguish whether individuals are putting blame on changeable or unchangeable causes. This division, first proposed by Janoff-Bulman, defines behavioral self-blame (BSB) as causal attribution of an event's occurrence to specific, controllable actions that the individual took. Characterological self-blame (CSB), on the other hand, is attribution of blame to factors of the self that are uncontrollable and stable over time (e.g. "I am the type of person that gets taken advantage of"). CSB attributions are harder to change than behavioral attributions of blame.Ullman, S. E., Peter-Hagene, L. C., & Relyea, M. (2014). Coping, emotion regulation, and self-blame as mediators of sexual abuse and psychological symptoms in adult sexual assault. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 23(1), 74-93. doi:10.1080/10538712.2014.864747 The development of these categories comes from observation of depressed individuals; sufferers often display feelings of helplessness and lack of control while simultaneously blaming their choices for negative occurrences, resulting in the so-called "paradox of depression". From an outside perspective, it would seem that blaming one's actions implies that the individual can choose better in the future. However, if this blame is towards uncontrollable characteristics (CSB), not choosable actions (BSB), the factors resulting in a negative outcome were uncontrollable. BSB and CSB are thus proposed to be activities that, while related, are distinct and differ in their effects when used as coping processes.
Empirical findings support the existence of the behavioral/characterological distinction in self-blame. For one, BSB is much more common than CSB. Tilghman-Osbourne, 2008) A factor analyses of individuals' attributions of blame and their ability to predict psychological symptoms have identified two clusters of self-blame: a factor of blame for the type of victim, correlated with self-contempt and self-disgust; and a factor of blame towards poor judgment or choices of the victim, correlated with guilt.Tilghman-Osborne, C., Cole, D. A., Felton, F. W., & Ciesla, J. A. (2008). Relation of guilt, shame, behavioral and characterological self-blame to depressive symptoms in adolescents over time. Journal of Social Clinical Psychology, 27(8), 809-842. doi:10.1521/jscp.2008.27.8.809 These factors closely correspond to CSB and BSB definitions, and so the study provides some theoretical support that individuals assign self-blame differently to unchoosable characteristics and choices they have made. Research has also compared CSB and BSB to moral emotions that individuals have, such as guilt and shame. CSB and shame had convergent validity to predict depressive symptoms in adolescents. On the other hand, guilt and BSB did not show convergent validity, and some evidence suggests further subtypes of guilt and BSB. Factor analysis of adolescents self-blame from bullying showed differences between attributions of CSB and BSB.Graham, S., & Juvonen, J. (1998). Self-blame and peer victimization in middle school: An attributional analysis. Developmental Psychology, 34(3), 587-599.
However, though distinct types of self-blame have been identified, evidence distinguishing their effectiveness as coping have been mixed. Evidence on the effects of BSB is mixed. Both CSB and BSB predicted depressive symptoms in rape victims, though CSB also had a higher relationship with future fear, and both types correlated positively with symptoms of psychological disorder in domestic abuse victims.O'Neill, M. L., & Kerig, P. K. (2000). Attributions of self-blame and perceived control as moderators of adjustment in battered women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15(10), 1036-1049. doi: 10.1177/088626000015010002 CSB mediated the relationship between bullying victimization and anxiety, loneliness, and low-self worth in middle-school students, while BSB had no positive or negative effect on well-being. Other studies did not find significant effects of self-blame on psychological outcomes. One study found that BSB and CSB had a concurrent relationship with depressive symptoms, but no role to predict depressive symptoms in the future, while another found that only CSB concurrently correlated with depressive symptoms. One study of Ullman and colleagues found no effect of CSB to predict PTSD or depressive symptoms from sexual abuse. Parents of children killed by sudden infant death syndrome showed no predictive relationship of BSB or CSB and future distress.Downey, G., Silver, R. C., & Wortman, C. B. (1990). Reconsidering the attribution-adjustment relation following a major negative event: Coping with the loss of a child. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(5), 925-940.
Many studies, including recent ones, continue to treat self-blame as a unified factor. Studies that conflate the terms of self-blame tend to find negative psychological impacts;Zahn, R., Lythe, K. E., Gethin, J. A., Green, G., Deakin, J. F. W., Young, A. H., & Moll, J. (2015). The role of self-blame and worthlessness in the psychopathology of major depressive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 186, 337-341. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2015.08.001Saunders, B. A., Scaturro, C., Guarino, C., & Kelly, E. (2016). Contending with catcalling: The role of system-justifying beliefs and ambivalent sexism in predicting women's coping experiences with (and men's attributions for) stranger harassment. Current Psychology, 1-15. the notable exception is the seminal Bulman & Wortman studyBulman, R. J., & Wortman, C. B. (1977). Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": Severe accident victims react to their lot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(5), 351-363. of accident paralysis victims, which noted the adaptive effect of self-blame to improve victims' recovery.
Perceived control