abstract: Reading partners’ actions correctly is essential for successful coordination, but interpretation does not always reflect reality. Attribution biases, such as self-serving and correspondence biases, lead people to misinterpret their partners’ actions and falsely assign blame after an unexpected event. These biases thus further influence people’s trust in their partners, including machine partners. The increasing capabilities and complexity of machines allow them to work physically with humans. However, their improvements may interfere with the accuracy for people to calibrate trust in machines and their capabilities, which requires an understanding of attribution biases’ effect on human-machine coordination. Specifically, the current thesis explores how the development of trust in a partner is influenced by attribution biases and people’s assignment of blame for a negative outcome. This study can also suggest how a machine partner should be designed to react to environmental disturbances and report the appropriate level of information about external conditions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) affects approximately one in four women every year in the United States (Black et al., 2011). As a result, determining the potential implications IPV has on the victims requires extensive research and education. The manner in which a victim is responded to by others following abuse may have important implications for their adjustment following IPV. Identifying factors that contribute to the quality of responses towards victims of violence can help to inform future intervention and prevention programs; assist in decreasing mental health problems, and reduce the incidence rates of IPV. The purpose of the present study was to examine dating violence myths and victim blaming depending on severity of violence among male and female college students. A sample of 927 male (n = 222) and female (n = 705) psychology undergraduate college students were randomly assigned to receive one of four hypothetical vignettes depicting varying levels of dating violence (i.e., yelling, punching a hole in the wall, shoving, and physical assault). Respondents completed measures of perceived severity of violence presented in the vignette, victim blame, and adherence to domestic violence myths. Gender had a significant effect on severity of violence depicted in the least severe condition F(1,246) = 5.03, p = .03. Additionally, gender had a significant effect on blaming tendencies in the least severe condition F(1,238) = 9.98, p = .02. However, gender did not have a significant effect endorsement of dating violence myths a. Study findings’ implications, limitations and future directions will be discussed.

This research examines how racism is hidden and denied by the press, and how blame is attributed to individuals in crime news stories. This research heavily relies of van Dijk's (2015) six discursive strategies to reveal how racism is hidden and denied in the press: positive self-presentation, denial and counter-attack, moral blackmail, subtle denials, mitigation, and defense and offense. Specifically, the Chapel Hill shooting is used as an example of a crime news story for my case study. This study will use framing as the primary method, and critical discourse analysis will be used to guide my interpretations of the frames. Frames are defined by Entman (1993) as texts that select "some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient" in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. I will examine words and phrases used when referring to the perpetrator and the victims in the crime story, and examine manifest frames. I begin by explicating terms that my research is founded upon: ideology, critical discourse analysis, race and racism, blame, and framing. Newspaper articles are collected and analyzed for van Dijk's six discursive strategies. The difference between national and regional news coverage is also examined. My findings suggest there are two gaps in van Dijk's six discursive strategies. I propose the addition of two discursive strategies that the press use to deny racism: negative self-presentation and contradiction.

The current study explored how factors associated with legal claiming (gender, age, ethnic/racial status, education level, disability type, multiple disabilities, income level, employment status, claiming thoughts, claiming history, and disability orientation) impacted the psychological constructs of locus, blame, justice, and behavioral intentions among persons with disabilities. The study also investigated whether locus, blame, and justice predicted behavioral intentions such as seeking legal counsel in employment-related scenarios. Results found that age, ethnic/racial status, employment status, education level, disability type, claiming thoughts, and claiming history influenced respondents' reports that they would contact a legal agency if they were in the same situation as the actors in the hiring and termination scenarios. With regard to the predictive nature of locus, blame, and justice regarding behavioral intentions, results indicated that higher external locus scores predicted an increased likelihood for respondents to consider contacting legal aid in the employee termination scenario. Internal blame scores showed a negative relationship with contacting legal aid in the employee termination scenario. Justice negatively and significantly predicted that respondents would contact legal aid in both the hiring and the employee termination scenarios. The findings of the current study are important because they can help rehabilitation counselors and other professionals develop interventions that will aid in reducing the increased incidence of employment-related legal claiming among persons with disabilities.

This research comprised of three studies designed to investigate the coping strategies utilised by high and low performing university students with non-academic stressors. Coping research has frequently focused on single stressors providing a distorted picture of coping. Utilising a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this research provides new insights into the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of coping with long-term, multiple stressors. It extends our understanding of coping beyond traditionally individualistic conceptualisations where active coping is valued over prosocial relationship-focused coping. Conceptualisations of social support is broadened to view it in more complex interactional terms. In Study 1, 521 university students were surveyed using a standardised coping inventory, the Ways of Coping Checklist revised. Several demographic groups were identified as at academic risk. Having good health, along with the high use Social Support and Problem Solving and the low use of Self Blame strategies all predicted high GPA. Study 2 involved a content analysis of 179 Exclusion Appeal letters submitted by excluded students. When confronted with multiple stressors, poor performing students compartmentalised or amplified multiple stressors which resulted in patterns of reactive problem-focused or emotion-focused coping. Passive and uni-directional approaches to social support resulted in the depletion of such resources. Study 3 investigated adaptive coping patterns using an open-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with twenty high performing students. High performers viewed multiple stressors as inter-related, which is termed cross situational appraisal and displayed a versatile coping pattern across stressors termed cross situational versatility. Proactive and prosocial coping are critical for the acquisition and maintenance of social support over a long-term period. Implications of these research findings for Student Services staff are discussed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study explores whether anti-fat bias is reduced when obesity in women is perceived to be the result of an uncontrollable versus controllable factor. An experiment was designed to test whether manipulating the causal attribution in favor of the target (i.e., offering an uncontrollable attribution that removes all responsibility from the target for her obesity) would have an impact on perceivers' anti-fat attitudes, beliefs about weight controllability, and tendency to blame a woman for her weight. The exploration of this topic was conducted within a greater context of obesity-related issues including body image, social stigma, responsibility, and a culture of blame. Equally important in this endeavor was gaining insight into the reasons why women are blamed more for their obesity than their male counterparts. Attribution theory (Heider, 1958) serves as the primary theoretical framework. One hundred and eighty undergraduates from a large, southwestern university participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following six conditions, five of which contained a version of the treatment embedded in an essay: Uncontrollable attribution, controllable attribution, potentially controllable attribution, manifest mention of weight, no mention of weight or control. The potentially controllable attribution was ultimately determined to be insufficiently manipulated and responses generated in response to it were not included in the data analysis. All participants completed a survey comprised of various measures designed to gauge anti-fat attitudes, beliefs about weight controllability, and blame tendency. A mediated model examining the relationships among the above three variables was also tested. Additionally, participants completed the Obesity-Induced Blame Scale (OIBS); a measure designed for the present study to test the degree to which a woman will be blamed and held responsible for her weight. While some results failed to statistically support the usefulness of causal attributions that remove controllability from the woman for her weight, other results demonstrated the embedded anti-fat bias some individuals hold for obese women. Findings that emerged from the qualitative data were especially revealing. The social implications of anti-fatism, beliefs about weight controllability, and blame tendency, as well as all key findings, are discussed.

Many survivors of sexual trauma describe the forensic rape exam as a second rape (Campbell et al., 1999; Parrot, 1991). Rape crisis medical advocates (RCMAs) assist survivors through this process, a time of particular vulnerability to retraumatization (Resnick, Acierno, Holmes, Kilpatrick, & Jager, 1999), by providing emotional support, education, and advocacy for comprehensive and respectful services. Campbell (2006) stated that the primary role of the RCMA is to reduce victim-blame, or the tendency to blame the victim of a crime for the crime or the circumstances leading up to it. The literature has consistently shown that survivors who worked with RCMAs received more medical and legal services and were less likely to feel revictimized (Campbell, 2006; Resnick et al., 1999; Wasco et al., 2004), but the impact of the work on RCMAs has not been sufficiently examined. Previous research has shown that many advocates experienced anger and fear in relation to the work (Wasco & Campbell, 2002), that RCMAs who witnessed more victim-blame reported less satisfaction with the work and lower levels of affective commitment to the job (Hellman & House, 2006), and that professional counselors who worked with trauma survivors reported higher levels of vicarious trauma than those who did not (Schauben & Frazier, 1995). Other researchers have shown that counselors who worked with trauma survivors reported higher traumatic stress than those who did not, and counselors who worked with victims of sexual trauma endorsed more disruptive beliefs about self, others, and the world (Bober & Regehr, 2005). However, the appropriateness of generalizing results observed among counselors to RCMAs is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine possible predictors of RCMAs’ experiences of vicarious trauma (VT) and vicarious post-traumatic growth (VPTG). Since a great deal of research examining the effects of trauma on care-providers focuses on individual-level contributing variables like personality style, coping skills, and history of victimization (Kelley, Schwerin, Farrar, & Lane, 2005; King, King, Fairbank, & Adams, 1998; Pearlman & Mac Ian, 1995), in this study I examined the predictive ability of several environmental/contextual/systemic variables on RCMAs ratings of VT and VPTG, including caseload, amount of formal individual and group supervision received, ratings of social community at work, meaning of the work, emotional demands of the work, and perceptions of witnessing VB by police and medical staff. One hundred and sixty-four RCMAs participated in this internet-based survey research. A series of hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that higher ratings of VT were predicted by younger age, lower amounts of formal group supervision received, and lower ratings of the social community at work and the meaning of the work. Ratings of VPTG were significantly and positively predicted by amount of formal individual supervision received, and negatively predicted by age and educational achievement. Interpretations and recommendations are provided to assist rape crisis agencies in supporting RCMAs in their work.

Bakgrund: Sexuellt utnyttjade kvinnors fysiska och psykiska hälsa påverkas både kort- och långsiktigt av det sexuella övergreppet. Bland annat uppges problematik som ofrivillig barnlöshet, skador i underlivet, samt känslor av utsatthet, hjälplöshet, ångest och skuld. I studier framkommer att endast en mindre andel sexuellt utnyttjade kvinnor söker vård direkt efter övergreppet. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att beskriva sexuellt utnyttjade kvinnors upplevelser av övergreppet, bearbetningsprocessen och vården. Metod: En allmänt beskrivande litteraturstudie grundad på nio kvalitativa artiklar, som behandlade sexuellt utnyttjade kvinnors upplevelser. Resultat: Litteraturstudien visade att kvinnor upplevde sig vara bräckliga emotionellt efter ett sexuellt övergrepp, samt att bearbetningsprocessen inkluderade ett sökande efter förståelse för det inträffade. Vidare att det var viktigt att kvinnorna fick stöd och bekräftelse på att de inte var skyldiga till händelsen. Studien fann även att restriktivitet i hjälpsökandet kunde bero på skamkänslor, misstro till vården, samt otillräcklig tillgång på service. Slutsats: Sexuellt utnyttjade kvinnors livsvärld påverkas långsiktigt av övergreppet och de upplever ofta ett bristande stöd från andra, inte minst vården. Följande omvårdnadsåtgärder föreslås därför, för att förbättra vården av sexuellt utnyttjade kvinnor: Enskilda samtal, Gruppsamtal och Information och utbildning till anhöriga. / Background: Sexually assaulted women's physical and mental health is affected both in short and long term after the assault. Some of the reported problems are infertility, injuries in the genital area, and feelings of vulnerability, helplessness, shame and guilt. It has been shown that only a small proportion of sexually assaulted women seek care immediately after the rape. Aim: The aim of this study was to describe sexually assaulted women's experiences of the assault itself, the healing process and the health care. Method: This general descriptive literature review was based on nine qualitative articles, which dealt with sexually assaulted women's experiences. Results: This literature review showed that women felt to be emotionally fragile after a sexual assault, and the healing process included a search for understanding of the assault. Furthermore, it was important that the women received support and confirmation that they were not to blame for the assault. This study also found that restraint in the help-seeking could be due to feelings of shame, mistrust to the health care and inadequate access to services. Conclusion: Sexually assaulted women's life is affected in long-term because of the assault and they often experience a lack of support from others, especially the health care. Therefore the authors of this review suggest the following nursing interventions to improve the care of sexually assaulted women: Private conversation, Group discussions and Information and education to families.

Although there are many studies that have examined explicit attitudes toward domestic violence, no studies to date have examined participants’ implicit attitudes towards this topic. The current research sought to address this absence and examined gender differences in implicit and explicit attitudes toward domestic violence. In addition, gender differences in attributions of responsibility and blame for an instance of domestic violence were examined. Participants’ implicit attitudes toward a female victim and male perpetrator of domestic violence were assessed using a modified version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). In addition, the Inventory of Beliefs About Wife Beating Scale (Saunders, Lynch, Grayson, & Linz, 1987) and an attribution for violence scale (Dexter, Penrod, Linz, & Saunders, 1997) were used. It was hypothesized that men would hold more negative explicit and implicit attitudes toward victims of domestic violence than women. It was next hypothesized that when compared to women, men would assign more responsibility and blame for an instance of domestic violence to the victim. It was also hypothesized that participants’ responses on the explicit and implicit attitude measures would not be correlated with one another. Results for these hypotheses were mixed. Limitations to the current research and implications for future research and practice are discussed / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Much research has been conducted about domestic violence using heterosexual women samples. This study investigated how heterosexual and lesbian women make attributions about domestic violence, as well as their myth endorsement behaviors. It also looked at the effect of participants’ egalitarianism on their victim blaming behaviors and the effect of their own victimization on their perpetrator blaming behaviors. Analyses were also conducted to examine the relationship between attribution behaviors and myth endorsement behaviors. ANOVA results indicated that heterosexual and lesbian women tend to exhibit similar patterns in the attributions of blame behaviors, though heterosexual women engaged in greater victim blame and situational blame than did lesbian women. ANCOVA results suggested a relationship between egalitarianism and victim blaming behaviors, but not between victimization history and perpetrator blaming behaviors. Pearson correlation analyses showed that relationships did exist between some attributions and myths, though not between all of them. Finally, ANOVA results indicated that heterosexual and lesbian women engage in similar myth endorsement behaviors, with heterosexual women endorsing myths more than lesbian Heterosexual and Lesbian Women’s ix women. Strengths, limitations, directions for future research, and implications for practice are also discussed. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services