Spontaneous Attributions of Heavy Drinking by Men and Women Who Drink Frequently or Infrequently

This study compared spontaneous attributions of 38 frequent and 42 infrequent drinkers regarding the causes of alcohol abuse. Attributions of women involved fewer past events and more positive affect than men to explain why people drank excessively. Similar differences were found in the attributional patterns of frequent men and women drinkers. The results were discussed first in relation to previous attributional research in which a forced-choice format had been employed to infer causal ascriptions of problem drinking. The importance of differences in attributions in understanding the etiology of problem drinking in men and women was also discussed.