Person. indirid. 01% Vol. 10. No. I. pp. 67-70. 1989 Printed in Great Britain. All rtghts reserved

0191 -E&769/89 53.00 + 0.00 CopyrIght c 1989 Per&mon Press plc

THE REVISED GUDJONSSON BLAME ATTRIBUTION INVENTORY

GISLI H. GUDJONSSON’ and KRISHNA K. SINGH’ ’ Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry. De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, England and

*Department of Clinical Psychology, Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge CBI 5EF. England

(Receioed 30 December 1987)

Summary-The Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory (Gudjonsson, Person. indil-id. D# 5, 53-58, 1984) was revised in order to make it more applicable to a specific criminal act. Factor analysis of the revised inventory revealed three independent factors similar to those found for the original inventory. External attribution of blame was found to be positively correlated with psychoticism, hostility, and external locus of control. Guilt feeling attribution correlated with neuroticism and introversion, but negatively with psychoticism.

INTRODUCTION

Attribution deals with processes by which individuals attempt to construct causal explanations for their behaviour and the behaviour of others. Two types of attributions seem particularly relevant to criminal behaviour (Snyder, 1976). The first type of attribution is internal vs external. Internal attribution occurs when the cause for the behaviour is perceived as being ‘located’ within the individual’s personal qualities. External attribution occurs when the cause or blame is attributed to outside social and environmental pressures. Another type of attribution, which is independent of the internal-xternal dimension, is the perceived freedom to act (i.e. the individual had a free choice to act and did not lose self-control due to mental causes). Gudjonsson (1984) names this type of attribution “mental element attribution”. He developed a questionnaire to specifically measure reliably the internal-external and mental element attributions as no such instrument was available in the literature. It was also considered important to measure the extent to which offenders reported feeling remorse for their offence.

The Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory (Gudjonsson, 1984) consists of three independent factors: external attribution (i.e. blaming the crime on social circumstances, victims or society), mental element attribution (i.e. blaming responsibility for the crime on mental illness or poor self-control), and guilt feeling attribution (i.e. feelings of regret and remorse concerning the offence). In the original study external attribution correlated with the Psychoticism scale of the EPQ, guilt feeling attribution was associated with symptoms of depression, and mental element attribution correlated with the EPQ Lie Scale.

There have been two main weaknesses with the original scale which needed revision. First, the items making up the three scales were both specific and general. That is, some of the items referred to a particular crime whilst other items were concerned with some general attitude. This has limited the usefulness of the scale in measuring attributions in relation to a particular crime. The second problem with the scale was the fact that all the items that loaded on the external and guilt feeling attributions were scored in the positive, raising the possibility of an acquiescence bias. The purpose of the revised scale was to overcome these two problems with the original scale.

METHOD

The Retlised Blame Attribution Incentory

Where appropriate, items from the original scale were retained. Other items were selected on the basis of their contextual and theoretical relevance. There were a total of 45 items selected, approx. 15 relating to each attribution.

The 45 items were factor analysed for 176 Ss (mean age = 29 + 7.8 yr) who had been convicted of criminal offences. Principal-component analysis was used and revealed 3 major factors similar

67

68 GISLI H. GUDJONSSON and KRISHNA K. SINGH

to that found in the original scale. These were rotated using Varimax procedure. Items having loadings of 0.30 or above were used to make up the three factors. These are given in Tables 1-3. Factor 1 was clearly related to guilt feeling attribution. It contains 18 items and relates to the extent to which Ss report feelings of shame and remorse for the crime they committed. Factor 2 (external attribution) comprises 15 items and reflects the extent to which Ss blame the victim and society for their behaviour and report certain justification for their crime. Factor 3 (mental element attribution) had significant loading on only 9 items and relates to how much mental control Ss report they had at the time of their crime.

Table 4 gives the mean and standard deviation scores for BAI, EPQ, Locus of Control, and HDHQ.

Attributions and personality

The three blame attribution scores were correlated with the following personality tests: Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975); Rotter’s (1966) Locus of Control, and the HDHQ hostility questionnaire of Caine, Foulds and Hope (1967). It was hypothesized that both hostility, EPQ psychoticism and external locus of control would theoretically be most related

Table I. Factor loadinn on nuilt feehne attribution

I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

IO. II. 12. 13. 14. IS. 16. 17. IS.

Item Loadings

I feel very ashamed of the crime(s) I committed 0.72 I am constantly troubled by my conscience for the crime(s) I committed 0.68 I will never forgive myself for the crime(s) I committed 0.62 I feel no remorse or guilt for the crime(s) I committed -0.57 It is definitely not in my nature to commit crimes 0.39 The crime(s) I committed was very much out of character 0.49 I hate myself for the crime(s) I committed 0.74 I would have been better off if I had been caught - 0.49 I constantly have the urge to punish myself for the crime(s) I committed 0.54 1 fear that people will never accept me because of the crime(s) I committed 0.61 I have no need to feel ashamed of what I did -0.57 I feel annoyed that I was caught -0.46 There is no such thing as an innocent victim in my case -0.33 I should not punish myself for what I did -0.48 I have no serious regrets about what I did -0.56 I would very much like to make amends for what I did 0.51 I sometimes have nightmares about the crime(s) I committed 0.41 I deserve to be severely punished for the crime(s) I committed 0.48

Table 2. Factor loadines on external attributions

I. I am entlrely to blame for my crime(s) -0.48 2. I did not deserve to be caught for the crime(s) I committed 0.42 3. I am responsible for my criminal act(s) -0.60 4. I should not blame myself for the crime(s) I committed 0.61 5. I should not blame other people for my crimes -0.50 6. Society is to blame for the crime(s) I committed 0.54 7. I should not be punished for what I did 0.66 8. In my case the victim was largely to blame for my cnme(s) 0.36 9. I would not have committed any crime if I had not been seriously provoked by the victim(s)/society 0.31

IO. I deserved to be caught for what I did -0.47 I I. I was in no way provoked into committing a crime -0.38 12. Other people are to blame for my crimes 0.58 13. I could have avoided getting into trouble 0.42 14. I had very good reasons for committing the crime(s) I dtd 0.49 15. I have no excuse for the crime(s) I committed -0.49

Item Loadings

Table 3. Factor loadmg on mental element attnbution

Item Loadings

I. At the time of the crime(s) I was fully aware of what I was doing -0.69 2. I would not have committed the crime(s) 1 did if I had not lost control of myself 0.67 3. I was feeling no different to usual at the time of the crime(s) -0.53 4. What I did was beyond my control 0.53 5. 1 was very depressed when I committed the crime(s) 0.42 6. I must have been crazy to commit the crime(s) I did 0.37 7. I would certainly not have committed the crime(s) I did if I had been mentally well 0.51 8. I was under a great deal of stress/pressure when I committed the crime(s) 0.42 9. I was in full control over mv actions -0.71

The revised Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory 69

Table 4. Mean and SD scores for the Blame Attribution and Personality scores

N MeZiIl SD

BAI Guilt External Mental Illness

176 10.1 4.6 176 2.8 3.0 176 3.6 2.7

=‘Q Psychoticism Extraverslon Neuroticism Lie

169 5.7 3.6 169 II.1 5.6 169 16.0 5.1 169 5.4 3.8

Locus of Control 133 HDHQ 139

II.7 4.2 27.6 7.8

to external blame attribution as measured by the Revised Blame Attribution Inventory, with introversion and neuroticism being most strongly associated with the guilt scores (Eysenck and Gudjonsson, 1988). The EPQ Lie score was expected to correlate with mental element attribution as this had been the case in the original study (Gudjonsson, 1984).

RESULTS

Table 5 gives the correlations between the BAI scores and the EPQ, locus of control and hostility scores. External attribution had a low but significant correlation with the EPQ P score, external Locus of Control and Hostility. Guilt feeling attribution correlated significantly with both introversion and neuroticism. None of the mental element scores correlated significantly with the personality scores. It is also noteworthy that age at the time of testing correlated positively with guilt feeling attribution and negatively with external element attribution. Guilt feeling attribution correlated significantly (r = 0.45, P < 0.001) with mental element and negatively (r = -0.29, P < 0.001) with external attribution. Mental element and external attributions were not significantly correlated.

DISCUSSION

The present findings suggest that external attribution has more significant associations with personality than the guilt and mental element attributions. Furthermore, external attribution seems related to personality traits traditionally associated with criminality (e.g. psychoticism, hostility). Guilt, as predicted, was associated with neuroticism and introversion. However, it should be noted that all the correlations were low and explain a very small part of the variance. Unlike in the original study (Gudjonsson, 1984), the EPQ Lie score did not correlate significantly with mental element attribution. The most likely explanation is that in the present study the sample consisted mainly of prison inmates who did not have elevated Lie scores. In contrast, the sample in the previous study consisted of offenders who had psychiatric problems and their EPQ Lie scores tended to be quite high. It is likely that the mental element attribution is more related to temporary

Table 5. Pearson correlations between the BAI scores and the EPQ, Locus of Control and Hostility

Blame Attribution scales

Age Offence EPQ-P EPQ-E EPQ-N EPQ-L Locus of Control Hostility (total)

N Guilt

176 0.21** I71 -0.20** 169 -0.21** 169 -0.17* 169 0.15’ 169 0.07 133 -0.09 139 0.07

External element

-0.14’ 0.01 0.21 l * 0.00 0.04 0.10 0.24.’ 0.21”

Mental element

0.02 -0.17’

0.06 -0.00 -0.03

0.07 0.10 0. I3

l P < 0.05; l *fJ < 0.01

70 GISLI H. GIJDJONSSON and KRISHNA K. SINCH

mental problems whereas the external attribution is more a reflection of stable personality and attitudinal characteristics.

The different relationship between guilt and the two attribution scores is interesting. It suggests

that external attribution of blame makes offenders feel less remorse about their offence, whereas those who believe that their offence was primarily related to mental factors still feel considerable remorse about their offence. One possible explanation is that those who blame the offence primarily on some mental factors still feel partly responsible for their actions.

Acknowledgement-The authors are grateful to members of the Psychology Department, H.M. Prison. Grendon. for helpful co-operation during this project.

REFERENCES

Caine T. M.. Foulds G. A. and Hope K. (1967) Manuai qf fhe Hostility and Direcrion q/Hosriiiry Questionnaire (H.D.H.Q.). University of London Press, London.

Gudjonsson G. H. (1984) Attribution of blame for criminal acts and its relationship with personality. Person. indirid. D@ 5, 53-58.

Eysenck H. J. and Eysenck S. B. G. (1975) Manual of the Eysenck Persona&v Queslionnaire (Junior and Adult). Hodder & Stoughton, London.

Eysenck H. J. and Gudjonsson G. H. (1988) The Causes and Cures of Criminal Behavior. Plenum Press. New York. Rotter J. B. (1966) Generalized experiences for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychol. Monogr. 80,

No. 609. Snyder M. (1976) Attribution and behaviour: social perception and social causation. In Neu, Directions in Afrribufion

Research, Vol. 1 (Edited by Harvey J. H., lckes B. W. J. and Kidd R. F.). pp. 53-72. Erlbaum. Hillsdale. N.J.