Pardon my gaffe: Effects of sex, status, and consequence severity on accounts.

Abstract

Examined the effects of offender sex, offender status, and consequence severity on accounts following an embarrassing predicament. Subjects were induced to believe they had committed a gaffe with either relatively mild or severe consequences for a confederate/victim of either higher or lower status than they, and their verbal and nonverbal behaviors captured on videotape served as the source of dependent variable measures. Verbal accounts were coded using Schonbach's (1980) account taxonomy. Nonverbal behaviors were also coded, as were measures of subjects' verbal and behavioral helping. Results showed a main effect for sex on account length (p < .001), number of concessionary elements (p < .001), and verbal helping scores (p = .001). Mitigating accounts were proffered more than aggravating accounts. Two-way interactions among sex, status, account type, and severity also were obtained.Social interactions do not always proceed smoothly. More often than we would like to think, we say or do something we and/or others wish we had not said or done, or fail to say or do something we and/or others wish we had, that is, when norms or role-based expectations are violated or when untoward acts are intentionally or unintentionally committed. Because such disruptions in otherwise fluid social encounters occur frequently, they have received a great deal of attention from microsociologists, psychologists, and sociolinguists alike (e.g.,

Apologies and Transformational Leadership

“…We found that respondents rated male supervisors in a vignette more transformational in both the apology and no apology conditions. These findings are somewhat surprising given findings from other studies which suggest that females are generally rated higher in transformational leadership (Eagly et al, 2003) and tend to offer more and richer concessionary accounts for perceived interpersonal breaches than males (Gonzales et al, 1990(Gonzales et al, , 1992. We offer three possible explanations for these unexpected findings.…”

“…There is also some evidence suggesting that perceptions of leaders who apologize may be influenced by leader gender. Laboratory-based studies have found that women tend to offer more frequent and richer apologies than men (Gonzales et al, 1990(Gonzales et al, , 1992. In contrast, men are more likely to avoid apologizing, and instead show a greater preference to use aggravating accounts such as denials (e.g., Hodgins and Liebeskind, 2003).…”

“…Individual and situational correlates of apologies have included transgressor and victim gender (e.g., Gonzales et al, 1990;Hodgins and Liebeskind, 2003), context of apology (Folkes and Whang, 2003;Sigal et al, 1988), apology timing (Skarlicki et al, 2004), perpetrator autonomy (Folkes and Whang, 2003;Hodgins et al, 1996), offence severity (e.g., Tomlinson et al, 2004), status of offender (Gonzales et al, 1990), and degree of relationship (Hodgins and Liebeskind, 2003).…”

“…To our knowledge, only one laboratory-based study of apologies has manipulated offender status (Gonzales et al, 1990), and one study examined follower reactions to excuses, denials, or justifica-…”

It could have been better: The effects of counterfactual communication on impression formation

“…Beyond the content of what is communicated, account-giving research finds that account acceptance is affected by the social context (e.g., by whom it is said, how it is said, and to whom it is said; Gonzales, Pederson, Manning, & Wetter, 1990;McLaughlin, Cody, & O'Hair, 1983;Niedermeier, Horowitz, & Kerr, 2001). Indeed, recent counterfactual research supports this notion.…”