Appraisals of blame in adjustment in conjugal bereavement

Bereaved individuals who had lost a spouse through death (on average 7.2 mo nths previously) engaged in an "empty-chair" monolog task in which they ima gined 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 appr aisal categories deceased as blameworthy and self as blameworthy. As predic ted, deceased as blameworthy was associated with greater anger toward the d eceased, whereas self as blameworthy was related to greater guilt on a repe ated measure assessing affective experience when thinking about the decease d in daily life. In addition, these appraisal categories were positively co rrelated with measures of symptomatic distress; specifically, deceased as b lameworthy was related to general psychological symptoms, whereas self as b lameworthy correlated with grief-specific symptoms. Furthermore, deceased a s blameworthy was predictive of 14 months post-loss general psychological d istress symptoms when statistically controlling for these symptoms at the t ime of the monolog in a hierarchial regression analysis, thus providing sup port for its mediating role in later adjustment. The implications of the fi ndings for the assessment of grief outcome and directions for future resear ch are discussed.