2324
 Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2004, 34, 11, pp. 2324-2342.
 Copyright ? 2004 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Causal Attributions of Ghanaian Industrial Workers 
for Accident Occurrence
 SETH AYIM GYEKYE SIMO SALMINEN1
 Department of Social Psychology Department of Occupational Safety
 University of Helsinki Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
 Helsinki, Finland Helsinki, Finland
 This study confirms the self-defensive attribution hypothesis on causal attributions of
 accidents in Ghana?s work environment. In this investigation, Ghanaian industrial workers
 and their supervisors assigned causality to industrial accidents, and their responses were
 compared. The results showed that the victims attributed their accidents to external causes
 to a greater extent than did the supervisors, and to internal causes to a lesser extent than
 did the supervisors. This finding reflects the tendency toward self-protective bias,
 whereby people tend to project blame for their failures onto external circumstances.
 In the execution of job assignments, employees often encounter negative per-
 formance outcomes that lead to information search and attribution formulation.
 These causal explanations help people to find remedies that are used to prevent
 future accidents from happening. The importance of being able to explain and
 predict such accidents has led to a number of studies on attribution explorations.
 However, the research results on causal attributions have often provided evidence
 of self-serving and ego-protecting biases.
 These attributional distortions are rather common in novel and ambiguous sit-
 uations (Wong & Weiner, 1981), where one is faced with multiple causal agents,
 as in the case of industrial accidents (DeJoy, 1985, 1990; Turner & Pidgeon,
 1997). As industrial accidents tend to afford fertile ground for causal and respon-
 sibility attributional distortions and biases, the work environment therefore
 seems to be the appropriate domain to examine evidence of causal attribution
 biases and distortions. An example of such attributional distortion occurs when
 people make use of self-protective mechanisms to project blame for their per-
 sonal failures onto external circumstances. This has been labeled the self-
 defensive attribution hypothesis (Shaver, 1970a; Walster, 1966).
 1Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Simo Salminen, Finnish Institute of
 Occupational Health, Department of Occupational Safety, Topeliuksenkatu 41b, FIN-00250 Helsinki,
 Finland. E-mail: simo.salminen@ttl.fi
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2325
 The Self-Defensive Attribution Hypothesis
 The defensive attribution hypothesis (Shaver, 1970a) originated from a study
 by Walster (1966) and assumes that participants in an accident process tend to
 explain the accident occurrence in a way that minimizes their personal responsi-
 bility. They do this by externalizing causality and invoking alternative explana-
 tions to protect their self-esteem (Zuckerman, 1979). Thus, self-defensive
 attribution is often described in the literature as a notion of self-protective attribu-
 tional distortion through which people deny or minimize the implication of their
 responsibility in failure events (Blass, 1996; Burger, 1981).
 The defensive attribution hypothesis has been confirmed in laboratory
 studies (Chaikin & Darley, 1973; Shaw & Skolnick, 1971) and has received
 support from empirical research in the work environment (Kouabenan, 1985;
 Kouabenan, Gilibert, Medina, & Bouzon, 2001; Salminen, 1992). These and
 other studies have indicated that both accident victims and supervisors tend to
 attribute the accident occurrence to causal factors in a way that diminishes
 their own responsibility. Supervisors, more than their subordinates, tend to
 attribute workers? errors (Mitchell & Kalb, 1981; Mitchell & Wood, 1980) and
 serious accidents (DeJoy, 1985, 1987) to factors internal to the workers. Reviews
 by Vidmar and Crinklaw (1974) and by Burger (1981) have supported this
 stance.
 Although promising, the research on defensive attribution has been devel-
 oped and tested primarily with Western samples only, which represent roughly
 27% of humankind. To our knowledge, no study has examined this phenomenon
 in a non-Western culture. Consequently, there is a paucity of cross-cultural
 replicative studies. Given the important differences between Western and Eastern
 cultures (Hofstede, 1980, 1991; Triandis, 1995), we consider it essential to test
 the self-defensive attribution hypothesis in an African culture; specifically, in
 Ghana?s work environment.
 Method
 Participants and Material
 The current study is part of a larger comparative analysis that examined
 the causal and responsibility attributions for accident occurrence between
 Ghanaian and Finnish industrial workers (Gyekye, 2001). The participants were
 actual victims, coworkers and supervisors involved in workplace accidents. They
 were to attribute causality to specified accidents in which they had been
 involved. They comprised 320 Ghanaian industrial workers from mines and fac-
 tories: 121 were accident victims, 117 were coworkers, and 82 were supervisors.
 The average ages were as follows: accident victims, 37 years (SD = 9.71);
2326 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 coworkers, 35 years (SD = 8.22); and supervisors, 44 years (SD = 6.80). All of
 the accident victims and supervisors were men, whereas 13.7% of the coworkers
 were women.
 The following steps were taken to contact respondents and to arrange for
 interviews. Letters requesting permission to undertake accident investigation as
 part of an academic program were sent to the Chief Inspectorates of Factories and
 Mines in Ghana. The response was prompt and encouraging. A list of industrial
 accidents that had been reported was provided. To elicit a fair recall of the acci-
 dent causality and occurrence, industrial workers who had been involved in or
 witnessed accident occurrences within the year or the previous year were selected
 as respondents. To ensure the accident severity dimension that is crucially needed
 in self-defense attributions (Kouabenan et al., 2001; Shaver, 1970b), all reported
 cases in this study were of those classified as serious by the Factories and Mines
 Inspectorates. Temporary injuries in which victims were absent for less than 3
 days of work activity were thus excluded from the data.
 The questionnaire (Appendix) was part of an extended version of an earlier
 study on the Finnish work environment (Salminen, 1997). Participants responded
 to 30 questions that employed a 5-point response format ranging from 1 (very lit-
 tle) to 5 (very much). These were causal explanations generated for the accident
 occurrence and classified as factors reflecting the dispositional qualities of the
 accident victims (internal factors), or those of the situational and environmental
 factors (external factors). This allowed respondents to rate their own attributions
 on dimensions of external and internal causality factors. In effect, all attributions
 for the accident causality were coded as being either internal or external. The
 higher a participant scored, the greater the attribution that he or she made for that
 causal factor.
 The presentation of the interview was such that respondents felt reason-
 ably comfortable about expressing personal beliefs (religious and otherwise),
 values, and work experiences. The duration varied from 15 to 20 min, depending
 on the context in which they were conducted and on respondents? level of
 education. The questionnaire interview was presented in English. Where
 respondents were illiterate or semiliterate and had problems understanding
 English, the services of an interpreter were sought and the local dialect was used.
 Supervisors were educationally sound and filled in the questionnaire on their
 own.
 The interview was administered individually. This ensured anonymity and the
 promise that all responses would be treated with the strictest confidentiality. To
 ensure accuracy of responses, it was also emphasized that the study was part of
 an academic work and that no person affiliated with their organization was
 involved in any way. Because of the nature of the study, special interest was paid
 to victims? and supervisors? causality attributions. The role of coworkers in self-
 defense attributions has been undertaken in a separate study.
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2327
 Questionnaire Scoring and Reliability
 The 30 questions on the questionnaire were computed to give total scores for
 external and internal causes for each participant. This resulted in responses to
 each item being placed in one of five categories. As a result, each individual had
 item-by-item scores, as well as two total scores. This allowed comparison of par-
 ticipants on both the external and internal causal factors scales.
 Internal coherence and reliability for the external and internal causal scales
 were tested with Cronbach?s alpha coefficient. Acceptable coefficients of .89 and
 .79 were obtained for the external and internal causal factors, respectively, indi-
 cating high inter-item consistency. To improve the validity and reliability of the
 research instrument, the questionnaire was pilot-tested in the African community
 in Helsinki, Finland (among Ghanaian and Nigerian students who also work
 part-time and are thus familiar with accidents in the work environment). This
 provided feedback on the clarity of the questions and the overall presentation of
 the questionnaire.
 Procedure
 To arrive at the intended analyses, three sets of statistical analyses were con-
 ducted. First, the mean scores were computed (Table 1) and subjected to a one-
 way ANOVA to determine differences of statistical significance on both the
 external and internal causal factors scale. Second, t-test values were employed to
 further test for statistically significant differences between victims? and super-
 visors? causality attributions on the internal and external causal factors scale. The
 third part of the analyses involved an item-by-item comparison between victims?
 and supervisors? causal attributions on the external (Table 2) and internal causal
 scales (Table 3) via t-test values.
 Table 1
 Means for Ghanaian Victims, Coworkers, and Supervisors on External and 
Internal Measures
 Measure
 Group
 Victims
 (n = 121)
 Coworkers
 (n = 117)
 Supervisors
 (n = 82)
 M SD M SD M SD
 External scale 49.88 7.62 47.03 6.57 38.35 6.39
 Internal scale 34.01 5.99 36.87 7.45 47.81 9.52
2328 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 Results
 The one-way ANOVA indicates that all three subgroups perceived significant
 differences on the external causal factors scale, F(2, 208) = 51.53, p < .001; as
 well as on the internal causal factors scale, F(2, 307) = 83.87, p < .001. The
 means for the three subgroups indicate that accident victims, contrary to their
 supervisors, attributed accident causality more to factors that were external to the
 victims and less to internal factors.
 Comparative Analyses
 Accident victims and supervisors. The results of the t-test evaluations on
 the external and internal causal factors scale confirm the existence of statistically
 Table 2
 Means for Victims and Supervisors on External Causal Factors Scale
 Measure
 Victims Supervisors
 p <M SD N M SD N
 Low wages 3.46 1.48 121 3.89 1.00 82 .05
 Saving of time and trouble 4.15 0.80 120 1.78 0.91 82 .001
 Work overload 4.35 0.64 120 2.04 1.01 82 .001
 Defective equipment 2.86 1.39 115 2.64 1.29 82 ns
 Inadequate training 2.88 1.27 120 1.90 0.91 82 .001
 Pressure from management 4.23 0.85 120 2.78 1.04 82 .001
 Coworker?s fault 2.56 1.28 116 2.35 1.09 82 ns
 Effect of medication 2.38 1.11 105 2.84 0.52 70 .001
 Operational procedures 4.21 0.74 121 2.67 0.79 80 .001
 Misassignment 2.89 1.35 121 2.23 1.10 82 .001
 Curse/spell/witchcraft 3.01 1.26 96 2.73 0.62 75 ns
 Religious faith 3.05 1.24 95 2.80 0.51 75 ns
 Poor housekeeping 3.44 1.25 121 2.25 1.07 82 .001
 Lack of appropriate gear 3.55 1.39 121 2.51 1.25 82 .001
 Ambiguity and task 
difficulty 3.32 1.14 121 2.58 0.81 82 .001
 Note. Response options: 1 = very little; 2 = quite little; 3 = neutral; 4 = quite much; 5 =
 very much.
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2329
 significant differences between the three subgroups. On the external scale, acci-
 dent victims attributed significantly more causation to external and environmen-
 tal factors than did their supervisors, t(143) = 9.89, p < .001. On the internal
 scale, supervisors, as opposed to accident victims, attributed accident causality to
 factors that were internal to the accident victims to a statistically significant
 degree, t(127) = -11.56, p < .001.
 Coworkers and supervisors. On the external scale, coworkers attributed
 the accidents significantly more to external factors than did their supervisors,
 t(128) = 7.62, p < .001. On the internal scale, however, supervisors attributed
 more causality to internal factors of the victims than did coworkers, t(147) =
 -8.68, p < .001.
 Victims and coworkers. On the external scale, accident victims employed
 relatively more external attributions than did their workmates, t(144) = 2.43,
 Table 3
 Means for Victims and Supervisors on Internal Causal Factors Scale
 Measure
 Victims Supervisors
 p <M SD N M SD N
 Lack of skill 1.67 0.85 121 2.78 1.35 82 .001
 Professional pride 1.92 0.90 121 3.35 1.36 82 .001
 Lapse in attention 1.99 1.26 121 3.59 1.29 82 .001
 Misperception 2.15 1.04 121 3.43 1.26 82 .001
 Misconduct 2.32 1.13 120 3.69 1.40 82 .001
 Lack of adequate 
comprehension 2.19 1.00 121 3.32 1.30 82 .001
 Risky work habit 2.19 0.93 120 2.91 1.38 82 .001
 Inexperience 1.90 0.87 121 3.35 1.24 82 .001
 Carelessness 1.96 0.93 121 3.92 1.18 82 .001
 Urge to show off 1.97 0.96 120 2.84 1.26 82 .001
 Ignorance 2.18 1.10 121 3.09 1.40 82 .001
 Sense of job security 2.80 1.14 120 3.04 1.27 82 ns
 Mood, had a bad day 3.02 1.24 121 2.08 1.07 82 .001
 Tiredness/exhaustion 3.19 1.08 121 2.43 1.37 82 .001
 Deliberate, willful violation 2.50 0.92 116 3.91 1.26 82 .001
 Note. Response options: 1 = very little; 2 = quite little; 3 = neutral; 4 = quite much; 5 =
 very much.
2330 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 p < .001. On the other hand, they made significantly fewer internal attributions
 than did their coworkers on the internal scale, t(217) = -3.19, p < .001.
 Coworkers? attributions on both the internal and external causal factors
 scales seemed to be midway between those of the victims and their supervisors.
 They rated victims? responsibility for the accident occurrence lower than did the
 supervisors, and identified more with the accident victims than with their super-
 visors. The relationship of all three subgroups in their causality attribution is
 shown graphically on the two profiles (Figures 1 and 2).
 Item-by-Item Comparison
 External causal factors scale. Statistically significant differences between
 accident victims? and supervisors? attributions were found in 11 of the 15 vari-
 ables (Table 2). Highly statistically significant differences were recorded
 between victims? and supervisors? attributions on time saving and trouble saving,
 Figure 1. External attributions of Ghanaian accident victims, coworkers, and supervisors.
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2331
 t(160) = 18.97, p < .001; work overload, t(125) = 18.21, p < .001; operational
 procedures (poor working schedules), t(162) = 13.84, p < .001; and inadequate
 training, t(199) = 6.38, p < .001.
 Other external causal factors that yielded significant differences were poor
 housekeeping, t(190) = 7.22, p < .001; lack of appropriate protective gear,
 t(185) = 5.53, p < .001; worker misassignment, t(194) = 3.81, p < .001; effect of
 medication, t(159) = -3.68, p < .001; and ambiguity and task difficulty, t(200) =
 5.36, p < .001. A statistically significant difference was also found on pressure
 from management, t(151) = 10.47, p < .001.
 As anticipated, no statistically significant differences were found in attribu-
 tions to causal factors that did not directly implicate supervisory roles at the
 workplace. Attributions on religious faith, t(132) = 1.78, ns; curses, spells, and
 witchcraft, t(145) = 1.87, ns; and coworker?s poor coordination, t(189) = 1.22, ns,
 as causal agents did not show any significant difference, nor was any significance
 obtained regarding defective equipment, t(182) = 1.11, ns. This latter finding was
 Figure 2. Internal attributions of Ghanaian accident victims, coworkers, and supervisors.
2332 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 not anticipated. A statistically significant difference was expected as a causal
 factor that implicated supervisors and management, but diminished the subordi-
 nates? responsibility. A relatively smaller, but significant difference was recorded
 on low wages, t(201) = -2.45, p < .05. Regarding attributions to wages and effect
 of medication, supervisors scored higher than did accident victims.
 Internal causal factors scale. Statistically significant differences were found
 in all but one of the internal causal factors (Table 3). Highly statistically signifi-
 cant differences were recorded between the victims? and supervisors? attributions
 on lack of skill, t(125) = -6.55, p < .001, and professional pride, t(129) = -8.22,
 p < .001.
 There were also some highly significant differences in workers? attention
 lapse, t(172) = -8.74, p < .001; and misperception, t(151) = -7.57, p < .001. Statis-
 tically significant differences also were recorded on attributions to misconduct,
 t(149) = -7.36, p < .001; lack of adequate comprehension, t(143) = -6.68, p < .001;
 unsafe and risky working habits, t(131) = -4.13, p < .001; and inexperience, which
 led the worker to misjudge his priorities and to make irrecoverable mistakes,
 t(135) = -9.16, p < .001.
 As anticipated, causal factors such as carelessness, t(146) = -12.63, p < .001;
 victims? urge to show off their expertise, t(143) = -5.26, p < .001; victims? inabil-
 ity to detect the inherent level of risk, t(146) = -4.96, p < .001; and their willful
 violation and blatant disregard of the company?s safety policy, t(140) = -8.55, p <
 .001, showed highly significant differences. These are all causal factors that
 implicated the victims? levels of competence and dedication to work.
 Interestingly, causal factors such as mood?had a bad day, t(189) = 5.72, p <
 .001; and tiredness and exhaustion, t(146) = 4.19, p < .001, showed highly signif-
 icant differences. Understandably, victims scored higher on these internal causal
 factors than did their supervisors. Not surprisingly, the only internal causal factor
 that did not show any statistically significant difference between the victims? and
 the supervisors? attributions concerned the victims? sense of job security, t(161) =
 -1.42, ns. Neither victims nor supervisors considered job insecurity, which tends
 to impact negatively on employees? job attitudes, work behaviors, and psycho-
 logical health, and thereby increases their accident susceptibility as important
 causal factors.
 Discussion
 The results show that attributions on both the external and internal causal
 factors scales were largely self-serving. Both the accident victims and their super-
 visors tended to attribute the accident occurrence to causal factors that diminished
 their own roles and responsibilities. What is evident here is supervisors? persis-
 tent attribution to workers? dispositional factors, and accident victims? attribution
 to workplace factors as causal factors for the accident occurrence.
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2333
 As stated earlier, self-defensive attribution theory predicted that accident
 victims would display a consistent pattern of external attributions, and their
 supervisors would display a consistent pattern of internal attributions. The cur-
 rent results confirm this assumption. It can be argued that this divergence in
 causality attributions was motivated by self-defensive ambition.
 Accident Victims? Perspective
 Accident victims, more than their supervisors, attributed accident causality
 mostly to workplace and situational factors, and less to dispositional factors.
 These causal factors exempted them from blame and responsibility, and held
 supervisors responsible for the accident occurrence. Prominent among these fac-
 tors were the saving of time and trouble, work overload, inadequate training,
 pressure from management, operational procedures, poor housekeeping, ambigu-
 ity and task difficulty, and lack of suitable protective gear, all of which implied
 supervisory inefficiency and incompetence.
 The fact that attributions were motivated by defensive ambition is supported
 by their consideration of supernatural and spiritual forces as causality factors.
 This is evidenced by attributions to witchcraft and religious beliefs. Even though
 both the accident victims and their supervisors attributed greatly to these factors,
 comparative analysis of their mean scores on witchcraft (victims, M = 3.03;
 supervisors, M = 2.73) and religious beliefs (victims, M = 3.05; supervisors, M =
 2.08) reveals that accident victims, more than their supervisors, employed super-
 natural and witchcraft attributions as causal factors. According to responsibility
 attribution theorists, an actor is not deemed responsible for actions that are
 beyond his volitional control (Helkama, 1981; Weiner, 1995, 1996). Thus, by
 their witchcraft and sorcery attributions, the accident victims excused themselves
 from the accident causality and implied that what happened to them was beyond
 volitional control and could have happened to any worker in that job situation. As
 Shaffer (1984) has suggested, such witchcraft and sorcery attributions function
 primarily to satisfy psychological needs to buffer the impact of negative inci-
 dents. This line of reasoning, ostensibly, might have been construed as a defense
 mechanism intended to lead management to the logical conclusion that they, the
 victims, were not totally responsible for the accident.
 Interestingly, the difference was not statistically significant. The reason for
 this observation could lie in the pervasive fatalistic interpretation of accidents in
 the Ghanaian culture where accident causation carries a predominantly fatalistic
 connotation and is usually laden with mystical and supernatural influences. It is a
 common belief among most Ghanaians that human affairs are controlled by mys-
 tical laws or supernatural forces that govern the whole of reality. Such ideas con-
 cerning spiritual forces are clearly evident in the explanations given for causes of
 misfortunes, calamities, illnesses, and death.
2334 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 The finding that victims? attributions were motivated by defensive ambitions
 gets support from the accident literature. The causality attribution of victims in
 the present study contradicts the overwhelming objective evidence that attributes
 a high proportion of accidents (80% to 85%) to human error (e.g., Heinrich,
 Petersen, & Roos, 1980; Salminen & Tallberg, 1996). Essentially, what these
 studies have shown is that accident occurrence is a result of both human error and
 environmental factors, with the role of human factors being considered the main
 antecedent to the accident process. All other things being equal, the responses of
 accident victims should at least have reflected the impact of internal factors to a
 greater extent. Undoubtedly, it can be argued that the environmental factors cited
 by the accident victims represent causes that are at least partially connected to
 inadequate supervision or management inefficiency. For example, work environ-
 ments with good housekeeping have shown a reduction rate of 70% to 90% in
 accident occurrence (e.g., Saari & N?s?nen, 1989). But by their emphatic exter-
 nal attributions and marginal internal attributions, the victims may have biased
 their attributional explanations in order to effectively counteract any direct blame
 that would have endangered their work positions.
 The reasons inspired the use of these defensive attributions were noted during
 the field studies. Discussions with top management and safety officials of the
 various departments that participated in the study revealed that workers were
 usually penalized to discourage future accident recurrence. This ranges from sus-
 pension from work to outright dismissal. Given that no worker would appreciate
 a deduction from his meager wages, let alone loss of his job, the accident victims
 might have been tempted to rationalize their undesirable behavior when it
 entailed the risk of a punitive response from management. Thus, when faced with
 management?s possible negative appraisal for their competence and work ability,
 the accident victims were motivated to attribute their failings to external factors,
 and particularly to uncontrollable spiritual forces, so as to lessen their own
 involvement in the accident occurrence.
 As anticipated, the internal causal factors scale showed that, unlike their
 supervisors, accident victims designated significantly fewer attributions to
 internal causal factors. Not only were they motivated to invoke external
 attributions, but they also reported fewer internal attributions. They attributed
 less to causal factors, such as lack of skill, incompetence, inexperience, igno-
 rance, risky work behavior, misconduct, carelessness, and blatant disregard for
 the company?s safety policies, all of which would have questioned their work
 competence.
 Interestingly, accident victims readily ascribed to themselves such internal
 causal factors that were perceived to be unavoidable and general to all workers,
 and therefore posed no danger to their self-esteem and future job prospects. A
 case in point is the observation on mood, and on tiredness and exhaustion. The
 victims, more than their supervisors, ascribed more causal importance to these
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2335
 internal variables (mood: victims, M = 3.02, SD = 1.24; supervisors, M = 2.08,
 SD = 1.07; tiredness and exhaustion: victims, M = 3.19, SD = 1.08; supervisors,
 M = 2.43, SD = 1.37). Taken together, the recorded causal attributions are consis-
 tent with the defensive attribution interpretations in which the accident victims
 stress external factors and underrate internal attributions that adversely implicate
 their competence and self-esteem.
 Supervisors? Perspective
 The results of the study indicate that supervisors attributed accident
 causality mostly to factors internal to the victims, and only marginally to work-
 place factors. The causes were mostly attributed to the workers? lack of skill,
 carelessness, misconduct, ignorance, inexperience, professional pride, and
 blatant disregard of the company?s safety regulations. These causal factors arose
 not only from the victims? dispositional characteristics, but more importantly
 they represented causes that were volitional, controllable, and therefore poten-
 tially preventable.
 With this line of attribution, victims? work practices tended to be erroneous
 and deviant, and therefore revealed their stable dispositions. Essentially, the
 causal factors brought forth by supervisors were the kind that implicated the roles
 of accident victims, and consequently diminished those of the supervisors in the
 accident process. Thus, from the supervisors? perspective, the victims? actions
 were a breach of the underlying social norms concerning workplace safety.
 A plausible explanation for this line of attribution could have been that the
 supervisors might have considered their inferred judgments as the appropriate
 yardstick in their causal analyses. With the overwhelming evidence that impli-
 cates the role of human error in the accident process (e.g., Heinrich et al., 1980;
 Salminen & Tallberg, 1996), the supervisors may have been tempted to lay blame
 on a subordinate worker rather than finding the true underlying reasons. Previous
 research has established that when observed behavior is consistent with expecta-
 tions, the perceiver relies on pre-existing causal theories as to its cause (Fiske &
 Neuberg, 1990).
 Another plausible explanation for the worker-focused attribution recorded by
 the supervisors could relate to their social status and hierarchical position at the
 workplace. As part of the managerial staff, supervisors are responsible for con-
 ducting accident investigations in their various departments. It therefore seems
 logical to assume that the supervisors? analyses in the current study were influ-
 enced by self-protective and self-defensive biases. Situational and environmental
 factors that might otherwise have been seen as compelling explanations for the
 accident occurrence might thus have been discounted and ignored in favor of the
 workers? dispositional factors. Kouabenan et al. (2001) observed that workers
 with higher hierarchical positions than those of their subordinate work crew
2336 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 tended to place blame and responsibility on the dispositional qualities of the
 victims. Similarly, DeJoy (1987) noted that supervisors tended to attribute a more
 causal role to accident victims, even in cases where the causal data defied com-
 mon logic and organization.
 A conceivable explanation for the recorded worker-focused attributions could
 have been the supervisors? desire to ward off threats of future victimization, and
 for psychological assurance that an accident of such kind would not happen to
 them. According to the literature on defensive attributions (Shaver, 1970a;
 Walster, 1966) the suffering of an innocent victim threatens the observer?s belief
 in his own victimization in a similar accident. The need to believe that the acci-
 dent is controllable and will not happen to the observer instigates a biased attri-
 bution for its occurrence.
 In order to protect themselves from feeling vulnerable to such devastating
 accidents, the supervisors could have been motivated to construct their
 attributional explanations to correspond to the personal negative characteristics
 of the accident victims. In essence, the high levels of attributions to internal
 causal factors in the victims?considered volitional, controllable, and prevent-
 able?therefore could have been attempts to deny that such an accident was
 uncontrollable, unpreventable, and therefore could happen to them also. Thus, by
 their internal attributions, the supervisors might have felt protected, assuring
 themselves that they were different persons, with totally different dispositional
 qualities and would have acted differently in a similar situation.
 Additional support for the idea that supervisors? attributions were motivated
 by self-protective and defensive tendencies comes from analyses of their attribu-
 tions to factors with less impact on their job competence and self-esteem. These
 analyses explicitly showed that the supervisors only took recourse to such exter-
 nal causal attributions that had a negative impact on their work performance and
 threatened their positions, but not to those that implicated top management. For
 example, the external causal factors scale indicated that causal factors such as
 wages, workers? poor coordination, and defective equipment showed either a
 weak or no statistically significant difference between supervisors? and victims?
 attributions.
 Regarding wages, the difference in attributions was small but statistically sig-
 nificant. Interestingly, supervisors scored higher than did their subordinates.
 Even though supervisors are considered part of management, because they were
 not responsible for workers? wages, defensiveness was minimal. This also
 explains the absence of a statistically significant difference on defective equip-
 ment and workers? poor coordination. The supervisors distanced themselves
 from managerial responsibilities of providing monetary allocation for equipment
 and machinery maintenance. In these cases, neither their self-esteem nor job
 competence was being threatened. Therefore, self-serving and self-protective
 attributions were lacking. Apparently, it was only when a situation had affective
GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2337
 significance for them that the resultant attributions were biased to suit their
 wishes and desires.
 All in all, these results show clearly that the attributions recorded were influ-
 enced by self-defensive ambitions. The common thread in the attribution assign-
 ment seems to be a tendency toward self-protection from both the accident
 victims and their supervisors. When evaluating the accident occurrence, both
 groups applied to it only those inferential attributions that minimized their own
 roles in the accident process.
 Implications of the Findings in the Work Environment
 From a practical perspective, the current findings make important contribu-
 tions to workplace accident investigation and safety management. According to
 the literature on industrial accidents and safety, attributions for accident causality
 are a central part of the formal analysis of workplace hazards and accidents
 (DeJoy, 1990, 1994). It is from such causal analyses that safety interventions that
 can forestall future recurrences are developed. The noted divergence in attribu-
 tions, therefore, can lead to a misdirection of subsequent safety interventions and
 easily be the origin of organizational conflict. To effectively learn from accidents
 and provide viable safety interventions, it would be feasible to seek and compare
 causal explanations of all employees (both subordinates and supervisors) and the
 beliefs that underlie their causal attributions. Such a perspective of accident
 causal analysis would create a more responsible and balanced approach to safety,
 as it will likely address multiple levels simultaneously.
 Among the explanations for the relatively numerous defensive attributions
 proposed by the victims was the poor safety climate in which the management
 was committed to punitive sanctions for breaches of safety policies. To ensure
 sound and accurate accident analyses, it will be crucial that accident victims are
 not routinely subjected to culpability and punishment. A safety climate in which
 management and supervisors adopt a committed and nonpunitive approach to
 safety would result in norms of behavior that will encourage workers to be more
 open about their job-skill deficiencies, and to accept responsibility rather than
 resort to defensiveness.
 The major limitation of this research was participants? need to recall the
 industrial mishaps. This involved the risk of making responsibility connections in
 the accident occurrence difficult to infer. Such an error is rather common in the
 context of industrial accidents that are studied retrospectively. However, our
 choice of participants who were accident victims, coworkers, and supervisors at
 their workplace and who were involved in the accident under study less than 1
 year before the study hopefully facilitated a fair recall of the accident process.
 Prospective examinations of accident processes could be viable alternatives to
 retrospective studies.
2338 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 The other limitation relates to the sample composition. The participants
 were predominantly male. This is because male workers are usually assigned
 the most dangerous roles in workplaces and therefore are more likely to get
 involved in serious industrial accidents. This could limit the extent to which
 the results can be generalized to female workers. Notwithstanding these
 limitations, the results of this study are consistent with those of most previous
 studies in this domain (e.g., DeJoy, 1987; Mitchell & Wood, 1980; Salminen,
 1992, 1997).
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GHANAIAN INDUSTRIAL WORKERS 2341
 Appendix
 Questionnaire
 How would you rate the influence of the following factors as contributory factors 
to the accident?
 Response alternatives: 1 = very little; 2 = quite little; 3 = neither much nor
 little (neutral); 4 = quite much; 5 = very much
 External Causal Factors
 Low wages
 Savings of time and trouble
 Work overload (too much to attend to)
 Unsafe or defective equipment and facilities
 Inadequate training, orientation, and supervision
 Pressure from management/supervisor
 Coworkers? fault (e.g., poor coordination)
 Loss of concentration (effect of medication)
 Operational procedures (work and production schedule)
 Misassignment (victim was new to the situation/environment)
 Being a victim of some curse/spell/witchcraft
 Religious beliefs (invincible from accidents)
 Poor housekeeping
 Lack of right protective equipment and gear
 Ambiguity and task difficulty (uncertainty about task demands)
 Internal Causal Factors
 Lack of skill and knowledge
 Professional pride (underestimated situation)
 Lapse in attention
 Misperception (poor judgment or assessment of situation)
 Misconduct (failure to use protective clothing, improper use of tools,
 equipment, facilities)
 Lack of adequate comprehension and ability to follow prescribed work
 procedures
 Unsafe/risky working habits (prone to accidents)
 Inexperience, mistaken priorities, irreconcilable actions
 Carelessness (exceeding prescribed limits)
 Self-esteem (urge to impress managers and coworkers)
2342 GYEKYE AND SALMINEN
 Ignorance (lack of awareness of hazards involved)
 Victim?s sense of insecurity at work
 Victim just had a bad day
 Tiredness/fatigue and reduced alertness
 Willful violations (blatant disregard of work procedures and neglect of
 safe practices)