Situational Sensitivity Of Self-Other Attribution Difference

Previous studies have shown that people's processing of self-related information is different from that of others.This self-other difference exists in people's memory,attention and emotion,especially in field of attribution.A large number of studies have shown that people tend to make more self-attributions about positive events and less self-attributions about negative events rather other-attribution.Self-other attribution difference is an important reflection of positive self-cognition,and is conducive to people's positive self-concept and mental health.Previous studies mainly used general interpersonal events to explore the self-other attribution difference,and seldomly involved the events in specific situations.However,the interpersonal interaction in daily life is always in a certain social situation,and the occupational situation is particularly typical among series of social situations.Previous research has shown that the self-other attribution difference in the occupational situation contribute to maintain the individuals' self-esteem and improve the individuals' career self-efficacy.Some researchers used medical events which happened in doctors' occupational situation and found that doctors made more self-attributions to positive medical outcomes and less self-attributions to negative medical outcomes.Is this self-other attribution difference unique to doctors' occupational situation or also generalized to doctors' daily life? In other words,is there situational sensitivity of the self-other attribution difference for doctors? In order to explore this issue,on the basis of previous research,we further set up doctor's occupational situation and daily life situation in the current study,and used implicit causal verbs to construct the interpersonal events that may occur in the above two situations,and investigated the self-other attribution difference and its related brain activity by using interpersonal events which could happen in both doctors' occupational and daily life situations.At the same time,in order to further probe the specific influence of doctors' occupational situation on the self-other attribution difference in interpersonal events,patients who simultaneously existed in doctors' occupational situations were also selected as research objects in the current study.Based on the same experimental settings and manipulations,the comparisons between doctors and patients were conducted in order to provide converging evidence for the question of how occupational situation affects doctors' self-other attribution difference.In order to explore the above questions,four studies,including 8 experiments,were carried out.In Study 1,we firstly constructed interpersonal events that may occur in both doctor occupational and daily life situations,then we investigated the self-other attribution difference in interpersonal events and confirmed the effectiveness of experimental materials.On the basis of Study 1,in Study 2,we set up the occupational and daily life situations to investigate the influence of the situation on the self-other attribution difference in interpersonal events.Study2 included three experiments(Experiment 2A,Experiment 2B and Experiment 3).In Experiments 2A and 2B,interns and patients with outpatient experience were taken as research objects,respectively,and behavioral experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of the situation on the self-other attribution difference.In Experiment 3,functional magnetic resonance imaging(f MRI)technique was used to investigate the brain activity related to doctors' self-other attributions in interpersonal events of different situations.In order to improve the ecological validity of the current study,clinicians(Experiment 4A)and patients(Experiment 4B)were selected as research objects to further investigate the influence of the situations on the self-other attribution difference in Study 3.In Study 4,by manipulating the sense of belonging to doctors' group(Experiment 5A)and patients' group(Experiment 5B),we investigated the mechanism underlying the influence of occupational situation on the self-other attribution difference from the perspective of belonging.The results of Study 1 demonstrated that people showed self-other attribution difference in negative interpersonal events but not in positive ones,such that the self-attribution score of negative interpersonal events was smaller than other-attribution score,which indicated that people were more inclined to attribute negative interpersonal events to others rather than to themselves.The results of Study 2 demonstrated that both doctors and patients showed selfother attribution difference in negative interpersonal events in both occupational and daily life situations.The situation did not regulate the patients' self-other attribution difference in negative interpersonal events,but regulate the interns' self-other attribution difference in negative interpersonal events,such that the self-other attribution difference of interns in occupational situation was smaller than that in daily life situation.The f MRI results showed that the precuneus was involved in regulating the doctors' self-other attribution in negative interpersonal events.The activation in the precuneus was greater in the processing of selfattribution than other-attribution in daily life situational negative interpersonal events,but there was no significant difference between self and other in occupational situational negative interpersonal events.The Study 3 also found that the situation did not regulate the patients' self-other attribution difference in negative interpersonal events,but regulated the interns' selfother attribution differences in negative interpersonal events,such that the self-other attribution difference of interns in occupational situation was smaller than that in daily life situation.The Study 4 found that the individual's sense of belonging to patients' group did not affect self-other attribution difference,but the individual's sense of belonging to doctors' group affected selfother attribution difference.When individuals have a high sense of belonging to doctors' group,the self-other attribution difference in occupational situation is smaller than that in daily life situation.However,when individuals had a low sense of belonging to doctors' group,the selfother attribution differences in occupational situation was greater than that in daily life situation.In summary,based on doctors' occupational and daily life situations,this study investigated the situational sensitivity of self-other attribution difference in interpersonal events.Results have shown that in both occupational and daily life situations,doctors and patients show self-other attribution difference in the negative interpersonal events,but the situation regulates the doctors' self-other attribution difference in negative interpersonal events,and the precuneus may be related to the situational regulation of the doctors' self-other attribution process in negative interpersonal events.In addition,the study also suggests that the sense of belonging to doctors' group is one of the reasons that occupational situation affects the change of doctors' self-other attribution difference in negative interpersonal events.