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    Responsibility pie

    责任饼图

    Technique
    Also called
    responsibility pie chart, pie chart technique, pie technique

    What is a responsibility pie?

    A responsibility pie is a cognitive therapy exercise for testing excessive self-blame: the bad outcome is drawn as a whole pie, every person and circumstance that may have contributed is listed and given a slice by their share of responsibility, and the person’s own slice comes last.[1][2]

    • My fault 90%
    • Other 10%

    After

    Steps, uses and evidence

    Schematic; the scene and percentages are made up.

    Select a pie or box for details.
    Schematic. On the left, the pie before the exercise, almost all of it put on oneself; on the right, the pie after every factor is listed and one’s own slice is added last. Below, the main steps and the technique’s use in OCD and in guilt after trauma, with the evidence. The percentages are made up. Select a part for details. Select a part for details
    Schematic. On the left, the pie before the exercise, almost all of it put on oneself; on the right, the pie after every factor is listed and one’s own slice is added last. Below, the main steps and the technique’s use in OCD and in guilt after trauma, with the evidence. The percentages are made up. Select a part for details. Save as image (PNG)

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    Key points

    • The pie technique was first designed to counter overestimated responsibility for a bad outcome (van Oppen and Arntz, 1994) and was later adapted to estimate how likely a feared event is.[3]
    • An OCD self-help book sets out five steps: name the feared event, rate your responsibility (0–100%), list every factor, divide the pie with yourself last, then re-rate.[2]
    • For guilt or shame, the finished pie comes with three questions: whether you are 100% responsible, how the pie changes your guilt, and whether you can make amends for your part.[1]
    • Cognitive approaches to guilt after trauma use it to test appraisals such as “I could have prevented it,” but survivor guilt often involves no sense of responsibility and needs other methods.[4]

    An example

    Ms. Wang’s team outing is rained out, and she feels 90% to blame. She first lists other factors: a forecast that changed the day before, no indoor backup at the venue, a date the department chose, late replies that delayed the booking. Last comes her own slice, for not asking about a rain plan: 25%. Next time, she’ll ask.

    Misreadings and limits

    It is not a way to shift blame: your own slice still goes in, along with the question of amends.[1] Direct tests are scarce. What its authors call the first prospective test of such techniques involved 319 non-clinical adults and the pie’s probability version, and they caution against generalizing to anxious patients.[3]

    Sources

    1. 1 Greenberger, D., & Padesky, C. A. (2016). Worksheet 15.7: Using a responsibility pie for guilt or shame. Mind over mood: Change how you feel by changing the way you think (2nd ed.), Guilford Press. View source
    2. 2 Veale, D., & Willson, R. (2021). Dividing up your responsibility pie (exercise, pp. 225–226). Overcoming obsessive compulsive disorder (2nd ed.), Robinson. View source
    3. 3 Gangemi, A., Gragnani, A., Dahò, M., & Buonanno, C. (2019). Reducing probability overestimation of threatening events: An Italian study on the efficacy of cognitive techniques in non-clinical subjects. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 16(3), 149–155. View source
    4. 4 Murray, H., Pethania, Y., & Medin, E. (2021). Survivor guilt: A cognitive approach. The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 14, e28. doi:10.1017/S1754470X21000246

    Last checked against sources: October 28, 2026