The relationship between self-blame for the onset of a chronic physical health condition and emotional distress : a systematic literature review

Objective: Past literature presents contrasting perspectives regarding the potential influence of self-blame on adjustment to illness. This systematic literature review aimed to summarise findings from all investigations to date that have explored the relationship between self-blame for the onset of a chronic physical health condition and emotional distress. Method: Between November 2014 and February 2015 electronic databases were searched for relevant literature. Only those studies which assessed self-blame directly and related specifically to illness onset were included within the review. The methodological and reporting quality of all eligible articles was assessed and themes within the findings were discussed using a narrative synthesis approach. Results: The majority of studies found self-blame to be associated with increased distress. However, several concerns with the quality of the reviewed articles may undermine the validity of their conclusions. Conclusions: It is important for professionals supporting people with chronic physical health conditions to have an understanding of how of self-critical causal attributions might relate to emotional distress. Further research is required to understand the concept of self-blame, the factors that may encourage this belief and to develop reliable and valid measures of this experience

Blame for all

Conference paper presented at the Workshop on Script to Program Evolution (STOP)We present a language that integrates statically and dynamically typed components, similar to the gradual types of Siek and Taha (2006), and extend it to incorporate parametric polymorphism. Our system permits a dynamically typed value to be cast to a polymorphic type, with the type enforced by dynamic sealing along the lines proposed by Pierce and Sumii (2000), Matthews and Ahmed (2008), and Neis, Dreyer, and Rossberg (2009), in a way that ensures all terms satisfy relational parametricity. Our system includes a notion of blame, which allows us to show that when more-typed and less-typed portions of a program interact, that any type failures are due to the less-typed portion

A Comprehensive Account of Blame: Self-Blame, Non-Moral Blame, and Blame for the Non-Voluntary

Blame is multifarious. It can be passionate or dispassionate. It can be expressed or kept private. We blame both the living and the dead. And we blame ourselves as well as others. What’s more, we blame ourselves, not only for our moral failings, but also for our non-moral failings: for our aesthetic bad taste, gustatory self-indulgence, or poor athletic performance. And we blame ourselves both for things over which we exerted agential control (e.g., our voluntary acts) and for things over which we lacked such control (e.g., our desires, beliefs, and intentions). I argue that, despite this manifest diversity in our blaming practices, it’s possible to provide comprehensive account of blame. Indeed, I propose a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that aims to specify blame’s extension in terms of its constitution as opposed to its function. And I argue that this proposal has a number of advantages beyond accounting for blame in all its disparate forms. For one, it can account for the fact that one’s having had control over whether one was to φ is a necessary condition for one’s being fittingly blamed for having φ-ed. For another, it can account for why, unlike fitting shame, fitting blame is always deserved, which in turn explains why there is something morally problematic about ridding oneself of one’s fitting self-blame (e.g., one’s fitting guilt)

Responsibility and blame: a structural-model approach

Causality is typically treated an all-or-nothing concept; either A is a cause of B or it is not. We extend the definition of causality introduced by Halpern and Pearl [2001] to take into account the degree of responsibility of A for B. For example, if someone wins an election 11--0, then each person who votes for him is less responsible for the victory than if he had won 6--5. We then define a notion of degree of blame, which takes into account an agent's epistemic state. Roughly speaking, the degree of blame of A for B is the expected degree of responsibility of A for B, taken over the epistemic state of an agent

Archaeologists and Aborigines

Aboriginal hostility to archaeological work in Australia seem to be due mainly to lack of public understanding of what archaeology is all about. For this archaeologists themselves are chiefly to blame, because of their general disinclination or inability to communicate in a popular wa

Cognitive mediators of the effect of peer victimization on loneliness

The impact of stress on psychological adjustment may be mediated by cognitive interpretations (i.e., appraisals) of events for individuals. Defining characteristics of loneliness suggest that appraisals of blame, threat, and perceived control may be particularly important in this domain. AIMS: To evaluate the extent to which cognitive appraisals (perceived control, threat, and blame) can mediate the effect of peer victimization on loneliness. SAMPLE: One hundred and ten children (54 boys, 56 girls) aged 8-12 years attending mainstream schools in Scotland. METHOD: Self-report measures of peer victimization, appraisal, and loneliness. RESULTS: Perceived control partially mediated the effects of peer victimization on loneliness, but neither blame nor threat were mediators. All three measures of control were significantly associated with loneliness at the bivariate level, but only perceived control was significant when the appraisals were entered as predictors in a hierarchical multiple linear regression. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the importance of research designs assessing multiple categories of appraisal. Furthermore, they suggest that intervention efforts aiming to combat feelings of loneliness within a peer victimization context should address children's appraisals of perceived control

Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond

Are we really to blame only for actions that manifest our character, as Hume claims? In this paper, I explore Hume's reasoning and the nature of blame in general. I suggest that insofar as blame comes in a relational variety as well as the more familiar reactive one, there may be something to be said for linking blame with character flaws after all

The Function of Blame

This paper sets forth a theory of blame. Many currently proposed theories of blame fail to capture all instances of blame. This motivates a pluralism about blame, suggesting that there are many kinds of blame. These varieties of blame are nonetheless united in serving a particular function in our interpersonal decision making. This function is to flag the blamed behavior in such a way as to unsure that we factor it into future interactions with the blamed person. Thus any feature of our psychology that generally fulfills this function is a kind of blame. Since on this theory an instance of blame can count as such even if it does not fulfill the function of flagging in that particular instance, as long as it is still is a kind of blame, this theory can account for virtually all cases of blame

Examining Factors that Influence Reactions to Human Trafficking

Human trafficking involves the transportation or harboring of individuals under conditions of force or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. Trafficking is a worldwide issue, and involves millions of individuals who cross all gender, racial, and ethnic lines. Previous research has shown that individuals high on the constructs of belief in a just world and human trafficking myth acceptance attribute greater blame to victims than individuals low on these constructs. The results of the present study suggest that belief in a just world, ethical ideologies, and human trafficking myth acceptance are significant predictors of blame attributions toward victims of human trafficking. The results further suggest that belief in a just world and human trafficking myth acceptance are significant predictors of willingness to help victims when the cost associated with helping is high. Implications are discussed

Blame and Medical Errors: Allocation of Blame for Medical Errors Among Physicians, Nurses and Administrators at an Academic Medical Center

Despite significant efforts among health care leaders in the past two decades to move away from the so-called culture of blame, individual blame for medical errors is still a significant presence in health care settings. Furthermore, little is understood about how individual people assign blame, and what differences, if any, exist between different health care professionals in how they assign individual blame. The study tested three hypotheses regarding the allocation of blame for medical errors. Hypothesis #1: Despite a shift towards systems-based thinking, health care professionals will blame individuals rather than the system for medical errors. Hypothesis #2: Even when given the exact same information, health care professionals will allocate blame or accountability for medical errors differently depending on their role in the health care system. Hypothesis #3: In general, health care professionals will allocate blame disproportionately towards other professions rather than blame their own professions. We conducted a detailed survey centered on a set of three standardized cases, each involving fictitious clinical vignettes during a single patient admission. Each case involved multiple medical errors, each of which was necessary but insufficient in isolation to result in the adverse outcome. After each case respondents allocated blame for the medical errors among four root causes that corresponded to nurses, physicians, and hospital administrators. A self blame ratio was calculated which examined the extent to which people disproportionately assigned blame to their own profession compared to the level of blame assigned them by other respondents. Overall, when given specific cases, respondents placed more blame on individuals than on systemic factors. Respondents placed more blame on physicians than on nurses, and hospital administrators placed more blame on the system and culture (non-individual factors) than either physicians or nurses placed on these factors. Respondents role within the health care system was of significant predictive value in determining how they would assign blame for standardized cases. ANOVA of the mean values of blame allocation across all three cases demonstrated statistically significant differences by respondents position for blame allocation to nurses (p =.004) and blame allocation to hospital system (p =.017) but not for blame allocation to physicians or blame allocated to hospital culture (p =.256 and p =.333, respectively). Self-blame scores averaged above 1.00 (1.20±.50, N=85), indicating that respondents in general placed more blame on their own professions than others placed on them. This held true across all three groups, but was the most pronounced with nurses (1.40±.48, N=24), moderately pronounced with administrators (1.09±.34, N=38), and the least pronounced with physicians (1.17±.67, N=23). ANOVA of differences between groups was statistically significant (p =.049). Conclusions: Respondents placed more blame on individuals than non-individuals; role within the hospital was a significant predictor of blame allocation; and respondents overall tended to blame their own professions more than others blamed them