Appraisals of blame in adjustment in conjugal bereavement

Bereaved individuals who had lost a spouse through death (on average 7.2 months previously) engaged in an "empty-chair" monolog task in which they imagined that they had one last opportunity to speak to their deceased spouse. The verbal content of their monolog speech was rated by judges on the appraisal categories deceased as blameworthy and self as blameworthy. As predicted, deceased as blameworthy was associated with greater anger toward the deceased, whereas self as blameworthy was related to greater guilt on a repeated measure assessing affective experience when thinking about the deceased in daily life. In addition, these appraisal categories were positively correlated with measures of symptomatic distress; specifically, deceased as blameworthy was related to general psychological symptoms, whereas self as blameworthy correlated with grief-specific symptoms. Furthermore, deceased as blameworthy was predictive of 14 months post-loss general psychological distress symptoms when statistically controlling for these symptoms at the time of the monolog in a hierarchial regression analysis, thus providing support for its mediating role in later adjustment. The implications of the findings for the assessment of grief outcome and directions for future research are discussed.