The psychology of the blame game

Whenever the unexpected happens, we immediately look for an explanation. What caused this event? What does it mean, particularly in terms of my own future?

This is because our brain is always working to understand the world, to make plans and predictions. When we use our powers of logic to do this, we’re remarkably good at it. However, if something happens that alarms or frightens us, fear swamps our power to reason and we jump to the first conclusion that comes to mind, without evaluating its likelihood.

Take someone who gets food poisoning after eating a salad in a restaurant; they may well swear they’ll never eat salad again but this would rule out a nutritious food source for ever. And, if the cause of the poisoning was, say, an unhygienic kitchen in that restaurant, they may return to it and fall ill all over again.

Assuming causation simply because we’ve noticed an association is one of many mistaken strategies we use when anxiously trying to make sense of the world. Psychologists have organised our most common strategies for making sense of things into a framework known as Attribution Theory.

When we attempt to understand why things happen, we develop an attribution style, a shorthand that allows us to come up with quick answers. It’s based on three dimensions. The first is internal versus external causation – either it’s my fault or it’s the fault of someone or something else. The second dimension is stability – either this sort of thing will happen again and again or it was just a onceoff. The third is specificity – either the outcome pertains only to this event or I expect the same result in every other aspect of my life as well.

In a famous paper, psychologists Lyn Abramson, Martin Seligman and John Teasdale proposed that when bad things happen, individuals who ascribe causation to internal, stable and global factors are more prone to depression than those who assume causes are external, temporary and specific.

For example, let’s say you’re asked to attend a job interview and you don’t get the job. If you’re feeling depressed, you’re likely to conclude that you didn’t perform well in the interview (internal attribution); that, from now on, you’ll be rejected every time you’re interviewed (stable outlook); and that you’ll be rejected in everything else you try (global attribution).

However, you needn’t think this way. Whenever you suffer a misfortune, remember you have a choice – not about the result but in how you interpret it. There were many reasons why you “failed” – and your performance is only one possibility.

When you fail, look out for self-blame, faulty reasoning and illogical explanations. Give yourself credit for your strengths, and look for ways to maximise the chance of a better outcome next time.

Linda Blair is a clinical psychologist. To order her book, The Key to Calm

(Hodder & Stoughton), for £12.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk. Watch her give advice at telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/ video/mind-healing/