| According to Sontag (1977), it is common in this society for people to blame cancer victims for getting cancer. Such explanations (subjective causal beliefs) attribute the disease to unconscious motivations, and exclude the notion of chance or randomness. The defensive attribution literature, in exploring how people explain serious misfortunes, finds that blaming victims for serious accidents allows observers to maintain an "illusion of control" (Walster, 1966; Lerner, 1980). Piaget's (1974) theory of causality, on the other hand, views concepts of causality as developing tightly in concert with logical structures (objective causal beliefs). These two formulations are examined by a study of causal beliefs about cancer victims which varied severity, similarity and personal concern. The sample consisted of 96 subjects who were students or recent graduates of masters programs. Forty-nine were psychology majors and forty-seven were non-psychology majors. While there were no significant differences on the severity and personal concern variables, significant differences were found on the similarity variables for instability (p < .05), externality (p < .01) and diet (p < .005). That is, victims were similar to themselves, subjects viewed their getting cancer as due to unstable, external and dietary factors. In addition, there was a significant interaction between psychology major and similarity on the control item (p < .02), with psychology majors believing that similar victims had more control over getting cancer than did non-psychology majors. It is speculated that this greater attribution of control by psychology majors is due to their seeing victims as unconsciously motivated to get cancer. The results indicate that theories about cancer etiology (e.g., diet and unconscious motivation) are employed differentially by people depending on whether the victims are similar or dissimilar to themselves. |
