Attribution Theory: A Fit with Substance Abuse Problems

Abstract

How substance-abusing individuals early and late in treatment explain the problem behavior of other substance abusers is analyzed in attributional terms. Alcoholism was chosen as the problem of interest. Subjects were 42 male alcoholics newly enrolled in a treatment program, 41 male alcoholics nearing the completion of the program, and 46 male nonalcoholic controls. All subjects viewed a videotape interview with an actor who was identified as an alcoholic or not identified. As predicted, early-treatment alcoholics made greater situational attributions to the “alcoholic” and greater dispositional attributions to the “nonalcoholic” actor in comparison to the late-treatment alcoholics and controls. Early-treatment alcoholics, more than late-treatment alcoholics or controls, rated the actor labeled as alcoholic to be more similar to themselves. Discussion focuses on the applicability of attribution theory to problems of substance abuse.