Research indicates that certain family environments can impact negatively on psychosis. Expressed Emotion (EE) in relatives is a reliable measure of the individual’s interpersonal family environment that has been shown to predict relapse. However, the factors contributing to the development of EE in this condition and the mechanisms by which EE leads to relapse are still poorly understood. Relatives’ control attributions and behaviours have been linked to EE, and controlling behaviours have been found to be predictive of relapse. This thesis investigated the role of behavioural control, controllability and self-blame attributions in high- and low-EE relatives of individuals with psychosis, and explored the impact of these cognitions and behavioural responses on patient’s symptom outcomes and on relative’s distress. The first empirical study (Study 1) utilised a cross-sectional design to compare types of behavioural control attempts (direct influencing vs. buffering) in high-EE-critical/hostile and high-EE-overinvolved relatives of patients with recent-onset psychosis; and examined whether behavioural control attempts and controllability attributions differed for the high- and low-EE relatives. The links between relatives’ behavioural control and patient relapse were also explored. Results confirmed that types of behaviours (direct influencing and buffering) were associated with different sets of beliefs (about controllability) and with different types of EE (criticism and EOI). However, EE, controllability attributions, nor behavioural control predicted patient relapse. Study 2 used a cross-sectional design to explore the links between self-blame attributions and distress, and self-blame attributions and behavioural control in recent-onset relatives. Results showed that self-blame attributions predicted relatives’ controlling behaviours towards the patient. Relatives who blame themselves did so for not overseeing their family member’s mental health problems properly or for perceiving themselves generally as poor carers. However, self-blame was not predictive of distress. The final empirical study (Study 3) examined temporal associations between contact with high/low EE relatives, behavioural control, affect and symptom experiences in the daily life of patient-relative dyads experiencing psychosis, using experience sampling methodology. Findings revealed that contact with high/low-EE relatives per se did not impact on patient’s symptom experiences or affect, but behaviourally controlling interactions did, suggesting that the measure of behavioural interactions rather than the EE status of the relative may be more sensitive to momentary fluctuations in patients’ symptoms. Momentary self-reports of relatives’ behavioural responses were also linked with their negative affect. This thesis evidenced that relatives’ controllability and self-blame attributions and behavioural control are associated in significant and meaningful ways with psychosis experiences and can impact both patient and relative outcomes, shedding some light into the EE mechanisms that relate to relapse and to the development of EE responses in relatives. However, more work is needed to further understand how these mechanisms operate, particularly in high-EE-overinvolved or low-EE relatives, in order to increase our knowledge about relapse prevention. The findings highlighted that the concept of behavioural control should be considered in future clinical work with families experiencing psychosis.

The role of child optimism as a mediator and moderator in the relationship between interparental conflict and child adjustment was examined for 36 children between the ages of 9 and 12 years who resided in a two adult home. Child participants completed self-report measures of dispositional and attributional optimism, as well as a self-report measure of interparental conflict. Mothers of child participants completed measures of child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Multiple regression analyses found that dispositional optimism mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and both child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Attributional optimism was found to mediate the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalizing symptoms. No significant moderating effects of optimism were found. The relationships between optimism and child appraisals of threat and self-blame related to interparental conflict were examined using correlations. Both dispositional and attributional optimism were significantly negatively related to child appraisals of threat and self-blame regarding interparental conflict. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The current case involves a female rape victim. Research has shown the level of victim blaming can be elevated if the victim is a lesbian woman compared to a heterosexual woman. Mock jurors’ responses to personality trait questionnaires (e.g., Belief in a Just World, Attitudes Toward Women, Attitudes Toward Lesbians) and amount of contact they have with homosexual people were employed as predictors of how they would decide victim blaming and perpetrator guilt. Personality trait findings were not good predictors; however, greater contact with homosexuals did decrease negative attitudes toward lesbian victims. Limitations and implications for future research are addressed.

James Baldwin, a Black American writer, contends that the root cause of America’s racial problem is not necessarily prejudice or hatred but guilt. In his essay, “White Man’s Guilt,” Baldwin says that most of the arguments white people use today against the reality of America’s racial problem can be reduced to a plea: “Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it” (Price 411). In many of his essays, Baldwin explores white America’s long history of guilt, denial, and justification, and he explains that many white Christians—in an attempt to avoid blame and protect their power, their privilege, and their identity as good, innocent, moral people—have perpetrated immense trauma against Black people. Since the time of slavery, white Christians have created a variety of theological justifications for racial inequality, and these justifications generally shift blame to Black people and to God. “Now, this is not called morality,” proclaims Baldwin, “this is not called faith, this has nothing to do with Christ. It has to do with power, and part of the dilemma of the Christian Church is the fact that it opted…for power and betrayed its own first principles” (Price 438). Contemporary research in the field of race and religion has shown that racism—and the denial of it—is often worse in white Christian communities today. A close examination of how and why white Christians have participated in racism demonstrates that racism is more than a few isolated incidents of “bad” people engaging in individual acts of prejudice, hatred, or violence. In this thesis, I will put Baldwin’s observations and insights about white people and white Christians in conversation with other scholars of white Christian ideology to demonstrate that racism is a widespread moral sin rooted in guilt and the attempt to avoid blame, maintain power, and protect identity. I will argue that preaching love, forgiveness, and unity often misses the mark, and that Baldwin’s solution of repentance offers a more effective approach in helping white Christians to combat racism today.

This Master's degree thesis focus on introducing collective blame from the psychological point of view. The theoretical part begins by defining the phenomena in general, including the context of its occurrence. The key chapter follows, focusing on the mechanism of collective blame attribution, its model, theories, and approaches. Following chapter describes the intercultural comparison of collective blame. Next part address the related phenomena (vicarious retribution, collective punishments etc.). The final chapter is related to interventions in the context of collective blame phenomena. The experimental part focuses on the mechanism of collective blame in relation to relevant moderating factors, based on previous studies. The research itself is a replication study, following the work of Denson et al. (2006). It is a correlation study that mainly focuses on whether membership in different types of groups is related to different levels of assigned collective blame, and also to explore which other included variables are correlating with collective blame attribution. The research data were collected through an online questionnaire. Respondents were mostly recruited through the database of the PLESS laboratory. Our research's result mainly confirms the result of the original study from Denson et al....

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Racial authenticity refers to the social evaluation of an individual’s group membership based on their perceived racial similarities to or differences from their racial group. While the criteria for determining racial authenticity may be abstract and mutable, negative outcomes may still occur for individuals based on whether they are perceived as an authentic member of their racial group. Notably, perceptions of racial authenticity may be particularly salient among Black college students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) due to competing behavioral expectations from Black students as well as non-Black students and faculty. The present study contributes to prior research on this topic through a validation and test of a novel measure of racial authenticity defined by one’s perceived racial similarities to their group (racial prototypicality) and their experiences of being mistreated by their racial group due to perceived racial differences (racial othering). Furthermore, the study elucidates racial authentication processes among Black students through an examination of how contextual factors contribute to evaluations of authentic Blackness and the extent to which racial authenticity relates to self-blame and self-esteem. Within the study, a sample of 136 Black PWI students (Mage = 20.27, SD = 4.14; 91.2% female) completed an online questionnaire. A path analysis revealed that Black students who held more negative views about their racial group (low private regard) and who had more friends of a different race experienced more stress from racial othering. Additionally, experiences of racial othering indirectly predicted self-esteem through self-blame coping. These findings have implications for understanding how perceptions of racial authenticity relate to well-being among Black PWI students. / Psychology

This study examined the role of internalized shame in mediating the relationship between severity of childhood sexual abuse and adult symptoms in three groups based on attribution of blame. The random community sample of 318 female survivors completed the Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (Briere, 1996), Internalized Shame Scale (Cook, 2001), questions about frequency of abuse, duration, and specific characteristics (no physical contact to vaginal/anal intercourse with force) and the degree to which they blamed self, fate, or perpetrator. It was hypothesized that severity (measured by abuse characteristics, frequency, and duration) would predict symptoms (measured by subscales of dissociation, anxiety, sexual problems, depression, and sleep disturbance from TSC-40) and that Internalized shame would be a potential mediator in all three groups (blame self, blame fate, or blame perpetrator). Multiple group analysis in Structural Equation Modeling showed that severity and shame were related for all groups and that the relationship was strongest when survivors blamed themselves and weakest when they blamed perpetrators. Shame was a significant predictor of symptoms for all three groups with no significant differences between groups. Severity was a significant predictor of symptoms for the blame self and blame fate groups but not for the blame perpetrator group, with symptoms being the strongest in the blame self-group. Sobel tests showed that shame was a significant mediator for all three groups. Given these findings, therapists treating adult survivors who blame fate or the perpetrator for the abuse should consider addressing the underlying shame. When treating adult survivors that blame themselves, therapists should consider addressing this attribution of blame and its meaning in addition to focusing on shame.

This doctoral thesis consists of three essays within the field of human technology interaction examined through the lens of behavioural and experimental economics. The three essays in this thesis represent three strands helping to reveal the issue of human-machine interaction from different angles. The first essay contributes to human-machine relations by addressing the problem associated with the problem of an individual experiencing a relative lack of resources that affects human judgment and decision-making in the financial domain. This chapter discusses how policy can leverage emerging technologies to design specific choice architecture that may support more risk-aware decision-making of vulnerable socioeconomic groups. Furthermore, it discusses how behavioural policy initiatives aimed at helping resource-deprived individuals conduct more optimal financial decision making might be effectively assisted by recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments and the associated ethical considerations. The primary focus of the second essay relates to individual decision making in a risky environment with algorithm help. By conducting an online experiment, it investigates how humans cognitively offload tasks to algorithms in a risky environment with different time constraints. Results demonstrate that the presence of an AI assistant is beneficial for decision making only when its accuracy is high. The third essay continues the investigation of human-technology inter- actions. The primary attention is paid to how information about the result of the action taken by a human affects the incentive behaviour, depending on the interacting partner. The main focus concerns how the information about the result (out- come) of the investment affects the reward and punishment behaviour of the participants that interact with Human and Algorithm agents. Specifically, I conduct an experiment investigating the interaction between out- come bias and human/algorithm responsibility.