CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS ABOUT COMMON SOMATIC SENSATIONS AMONG FREQUENT GENERAL-PRACTICE ATTENDERS

The causal attributions that people make about bodily symptoms or sens ations are likely to influence their decisions whether or not to consu lt a doctor. Previous research has supported the model that people ten d initially to look for external or environmental explanations for bod ily sensations (normalizing attributions) and only if this process fai ls do they search for attributions internal to themselves (somatic or psychological attributions). This study tested two hypotheses about fr equent general practice attenders: (1) compared with others, they are more likely to make somatic attributions and less likely to make norma lizing ones; and (2) given a bodily symptom together with a somatic ex planation, frequent attenders will have greater difficulty than others in finding reasons why the given (pathological) explanation is untrue . The frequent attenders' group had themselves initiated an average of 12 general practice visits in the 12 months before assessment, while a control group of infrequent attenders had not made appointments to s ee their general practitioner for an average of 24 months. The results provide partial support for the hypotheses. Frequent attenders genera ted significantly fewer normalizing explanations for a series of commo n bodily sensations than the comparison group, although the two groups did not differ in their somatic attributions. Given a common bodily s ensation and an accompanying pathological explanation, the frequent at tenders were less able than the control group to generate reasons why the given explanation might be untrue. Some associations were found be tween these measures and anxiety.