The identification of alcohol problems: socioeconomic status differences in social norms and causal attributions

It was hypothesized that the identification of abnormal behavior requires an internal causal attribution for actions that violate shared social norms. It was further hypothesized that socioeconomic status (SES) groups would differ in problem identification, due to differences in their norms and causal attribution biases. Attributions of causality for alcohol use and inferences of an alcohol problem were examined in socioeconomically different communities that differed in their social norms for alcohol consumption. For all respondents problem identification required that alcohol use be attributed to causes internal to the person. However, the lower SES sample was generally biased toward attributing alcohol use to external causes, in contrast to an "internal" bias among higher SES respondents. The latter were also more sensitive to norm violations in their problem identification. These differences led higher SES respondents to more readily identify an alcohol problem.