Actor-observer differences in the perception of suicide

Jones and Nisbett (1972) hypothesized that people attribute the actions of other people to personal causes, whereas they see their own behavior as relatively more influenced by the situation. The present study hypothesized that this finding applies to suicidal behavior. Two groups of undergraduates...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of social and clinical psychology 1986-03, Vol.4 (1), p.101-106
Main Authors: COGGIN, W. C, RANGE, L. M, BRANDT, R. S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude towards mental illness
Biological and medical sciences
Causality
Medical sciences
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Questionnaires
Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry
Suicides & suicide attempts
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Summary:Jones and Nisbett (1972) hypothesized that people attribute the actions of other people to personal causes, whereas they see their own behavior as relatively more influenced by the situation. The present study hypothesized that this finding applies to suicidal behavior. Two groups of undergraduates (n = 124) read a paragraph about a suicidal person and her sister, and half were told to imagine themselves as the suicidal person in the story. Subjects then completed a questionnaire that assessed their attributions of psychological disturbance to the victim and the sister (situation). A 2 (actor-observer) × 2 (person--situation) analysis of variance with repeated measures on the second factor indicated that, as predicted, both actors and observers attributed more psychological disturbance to the victim than to the sister (situation). Moreover, also as predicted, actors attributed more psychological disturbance to the sister (situation) than did observers. An application of these results is that suicidal persons might be treated by attempting to reverse the traditional actor and observer roles and their corresponding attributions.
ISSN:0736-7236
1943-2771
DOI:10.1521/jscp.1986.4.1.101