Attitudes toward suicide: application of the attribution-value model of prejudice

Date

2002

Author

Murathanoğlu, Ayşe Münire

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The thesis investigated attitudes toward acceptability of suicide and suicide attempters in Turkish college population. Also, attribution- value model of prejudice was applied to suicide attempters, with the addition of religious belief against suicide. Two separate studies were conducted for the thesis. The main purpose of the first study was to develop a scale to measure the examined variables. With the addition of new items to the scale, the second study was conducted to measure participants' attitudes toward acceptability of suicide and suicide attempters. The attribution-value model of prejudice was applied to the 111attitudes toward suicide attempters. The sample of the second study, which was the main study, consisted of 110 (63 males, 47 females) undergraduate students from Middle East Technical University with a mean age of 20.36. The scale was administered to respondents measuring acceptability of suicide, attitudes toward suicide attempters, attribution of controllability, cultural value, religious belief against suicide and behavioral reactions of help. The findings, in general, showed that participants disagreed with the acceptability of suicide but they did not have negative attitudes toward suicide attempters. Attribution-value model of prejudice was confirmed, attribution of controllability and cultural value both predicted significantly attitudes toward suicide attempters. This model was confirmed to be a general model that can be applied to suicide attempters as an outgroup in Turkey. The addition of religious belief against suicide to attribution-value model of prejudice did not yield significant result. Also, participants who perceived suicide as uncontrollable, did not tend to show more helping reactions to the suicide attempters than participants who perceived suicide as controllable.

Subject Keywords

Attitudes, Suicide, Suicide attempters, Gender difference, Attribution- value model of prejudice, Controllability, Cultural value

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/12489

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis