Beliefs about the causes of alcohol-related problems among alcoholic and nonalcoholic women

Both problem drinker and non-problem drinker college students and adult women assigned major responsibility for problem drinking internally to the problem drinker (N = 479). A distressing event and present or past environment received the next highest responsibility ratings in all groups. Actor-observer differences predicted by Jones and Nisbett (1971) did not occur. However, persons were likely to rate several causes as responsible for drinking problems. Female college students were more likely to perceive drinking problems as due to external factors and less likely to believe them due to heredity than were older women.