Thanking, Apologizing, Bragging, and Blaming: Responsibility Exchange Theory and the Currency of Communication

Abstract

From the time we are children, we are taught to say “thank you” and “I’m sorry.” These communications are central to many social interactions, and the failure to say them often leads to conflict in relationships. Research has documented that, alongside the impact they can have on relationships, apologies and thanks can also impact material outcomes as small as restaurant tips and as significant as settlements of medical malpractice lawsuits. But, it is trivial to utter the words; how can such “cheap talk” carry so much value? In this paper, we propose a “responsibility exchange theory” that explains why these communications are not costless, and which draws connections between four forms of communication that have not previously been connected: thanking, apologizing, bragging, and blaming. All four of these communications relay information about credit or blame, and thus introduce image-based costs and benefits for both the communicator and the recipient of communication: Each of the four communications involves a tradeoff between appearing competent and appearing warm. By formalizing these social psychological insights with a utility-based approach to modeling communication, and by applying game theoretic analysis, we offer new insights about social communication. We test several of the model’s novel predictions about strategic communication in two experiments: The first involves hypothetical choices in a scenario study, and the second involves real choices in a live interaction. We end with a discussion of the theory’s place in the literature and consider extended predictions and applications as examples of future directions for research.

Politeness and reputation in cultural evolution

“…1 Since the underlying game structure applies to any similar situation involving a transfer of responsibility for a positive or negative outcome, the initials O and R extend to the roles of Originator and Receiver, the former (mostly) responsible Table 1 A schematic presentation of the responsibility exchange theory. Adapted from Chaudhry and Loewenstein (2019) Originator (O) Receiver (R) for the outcome, the latter receiving (most of) the credit. S extends to Spectator, which may be real or virtual (VS).…”

“…Virtually all existing utility-based accounts of SCP (Pinker 2007;Clark 2012;Asher and Quinley 2012;Quinley 2012;Quinley and Ahern 2012) assume the costs of polite communications to be cashed out in the social commodity 'face' (Goffman 1967;Brown and Levinson 1987;Culpeper 2011;Brown 2017), without however a satisfying account of the benefits of SCP, nor the mechanism through which face acquires its purchasing power. In contrast, the recently proposed 'Responsibility Exchange Theory' (Chaudhry and Loewenstein 2019) explains SCP in a class of situations involving a transfer of credit or blame by grounding both the costs and benefits in somewhat more tangible social constructs: (perceived) competence and (perceived) warmth.…”

“…Responsibility exchange theory constitutes a marked advance in the understanding of SCP, but remains confined: firstly, to narrow contexts, and secondly, to an epistemic model, which explains and predicts individual choice of more versus less polite strategies (thanking, apologizing versus bragging, blaming). Building on the insights from Chaudhry and Loewenstein (2019), C&L hereafter, here we take further steps in extending their epistemic model into a more general evolutionary model of SCP. Rather than modeling the utility of individuals in one-off dyadic interactions, we model the fitness of behavioral strategies that compete with one another over time and inside a population; in short, strategies of politeness are subjected to the dynamics of cultural evolution.…”

Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Apologies: Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment

“…An alternate contract theory-inspired model for how apologies restore trust in a relationship is based on the idea that intrinsic type, θ, is two-dimensional. A firm can have good intentions but they may be unreliable for some types of tasks (Chaudhry and Loewenstein (2017) provide recent evidence on how apologies rely on the trade-off in the the agent's perception of the principal's (a) Example screenshot of one of the apology emails sent to riders: the "basic" apology with a $5 promotion.…”

Why do you ask? The informational dynamics of questions and answers

“…The same politeness considerations may influence an-swerer behavior as well. For instance, when people do give literal answers they may use more words than necessary to avoid seeming curt or unhelpful (see also Chaudhry & Loewenstein, 2019). Such politeness considerations have been formally incorporated into RSA models as a kind of goal that takes into account social and presentational utilities (Yoon, Tessler, Goodman, & Frank, 2016), which could be straightforwardly incorporated into a questioner model.…”