This is a part of podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center discussing emotional challenges after a traumatic burn injury (TBI). In this segment, Dr. Dawn Neumann discusses what negative attribution is. 

Negative attribution. Ultimately it is the way somebody judges another person's actions. So think about, for example, you're walking down the hallway and you say hi to your colleague and they snub you, or you're in the grocery store and somebody rolls over your foot with a grocery cart, or you are driving down the highway and somebody cuts you off. We are always trying to figure out why do people do the things that they do? What was the reason for their action? And so with negative attribution, it means that we are interpreting that behavior in a negative way. That we are jumping to the assumption that somebody is doing something with a negative intention so that your colleague purposely snubbed you, or the person in the grocery store purposely rolled over your foot with a cart. You're not giving the person the benefit of the doubt and thinking, well, my colleague just didn't see me, or they were focusing on something else, or the person in the grocery store, what they were looking for something on the shelf and they were distracted and that's why they ran over my foot.  

We are still in the very beginning of the research with regards to negative attributions after brain injury, and I do want to just make a comment about the reason why this is so important is that the way we interpret other people's actions. So if we assume somebody did something to us on purpose, we're going to more likely be angry if we think somebody did something to us on purpose. And so that's part of the issue. I got into this as a way to try to understand the problems with anger and aggression after brain injury. With our research that we're doing on negative attributions, we are finding that the ability to make inferences about social behavior is really a problem at being able to accurately interpret other people's intentions. And so we are currently studying a group therapy program where we're teaching people perspective taking. So one of the things that we're doing right now is we are looking at an intervention that teaches people with brain injury perspective taking skills to teach them to put themselves in somebody else's shoes so that they will be more inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt.  

If you actually think about it, it is very interesting because if I'm late showing up to an appointment versus my colleague being late for showing up to an appointment, I am going to make a whole bunch of excuses for myself of why I was late to that appointment. Oh, my alarm clock didn't go off, or I had a flat tire, or whatever it might be. But I have a whole lot of excuses that kind of let me off the hook. But when I think about my colleague, my interpretation is more likely going to be, well, he's just lazy, or he doesn't care, or he doesn't respect my time. So by putting somebody in the other person's shoes and now you become this other person and you have to think about why you did this action, you can think about it in a way that you're going to give yourself the benefit of the doubt. 

Visit https://msktc.org/tbi and get the answers you need from experts who conduct innovative and high-quality research, provide patient care, and work to improve the health and overall quality of life for people with traumatic brain injury. That’s https://msktc.org/tbi.