Download or read book An Examination of Self-blame Among Victims of Sexual Assault written by Christina Marie Hassija and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People habitually generate causal explanations (i.e., attributions) for unexpected, unpleasant life events (Joseph, Yule, & Williams, 1993) and the meaning assigned to such experiences via these attributions may serve as a source of vulnerability for the development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Internal attributions (i.e. self blame) have been routinely associated with greater distress levels among victims of sexual assault (e.g., Arata & Burkhart, 1996; Frazier, 1990). Janoff-Bulman (1979) theorized a distinction between two types of self-blame: behavioral and characterological. The former is theorized to encompass attributions of blame central to one's (controllable) behavior, while the latter is thought to reflect self-blame specific to one's character deficits and perceived deservingness for an event. Janoff-Bulman further proposed that behavioral self-blame would be more adaptive than characterological self blame, since the former is thought to be associated with greater perceived avoidability and controllability over future events. The purpose of the present study was to examine the adaptive value of behavioral and characterological self-blame among survivors of sexual assault. Eighty-nine sexual assault survivors recruited from undergraduate psychology courses completed measures of PTSD, depression, and anxiety symptom severity, self-blame, and future avoidability. In addition, they completed writing exercises designed to elicit causal explanations for their assault. Results revealed positive associations between characterological self-blame and PTSD (r=.46, p