An exploration of accident/failure at attribution and the potential implications for future research in occupational health psychology with psychiatric nurses

Abstract

The current review of the literature provides an overview of Attribution Theory (AT) and the themes, trends and gaps that have emerged for this construct within the field of occupational health psychology. AT is a widely published area of research and has served as a theoretical framework to investigate how individuals interpret accidents and their causes. Within this framework, researchers have investigated cognitive biases such as the selfserving bias, the false consensus effect, the actorobserver bias, the fundamental attribution error, the ultimate attribution error, Fischoff’s hindsight bias, the hedonic relevance bias, the optimism bias, and defensive attribution theory. Themes and trends of this review include subjective attribution tendencies, the types of attributions and their relation to safety behaviours, controversies regarding the assumptions of responsibility and the importance of accurate accident appraisals. Current gaps in the literature include somewhat dated research and only partial use of Weiner’s AT model (1985; 2010). In addition, there seems to be a paucity of research on AT as it applies to occupations with a high prevalence of accidents such as psychiatric nursing. The review further describes the extent to which the theory may be useful for occupational health and safety, accident prevention and in psychiatric nursing where practitioners face not only the common risks inherent to the profession but also the significant and unique risks in mental health facilities such as patient aggression and violence. This paper concludes by suggesting avenues of possible research as it applies to this profession, methodological challenges and the implications for future studies.