Why did I say sorry? Apology motives and transgressor perceptions of reconciliation

Abstract

Summary Despite the importance of apology in reconciling interpersonal transgressions, little research has focused on the people engaging in the behavior. Why do transgressors apologize in the workplace, and do apology motives shape transgressor perceptions of reconciliation? We conducted three field studies using qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine these questions. In Studies 1 and 2 (total N = 781), we identified four distinct apology motives—self‐blame, relational value, personal expedience, and fear of sanctions—and developed self‐report scales to measure the motives. In Study 3 (N = 420), we examined relations between apology motives and transgressor perceptions of victim forgiveness and relationship reconciliation through the lens of motivated cognition. We found that apologizing due to self‐blame, relational value, and personal expedience increases perceptions of victim forgiveness, whereas apologizing due to fear of sanctions decreases perceived forgiveness. Moreover, mediation analyses revealed that motives indirectly influence transgressor perceptions of relationship reconciliation through perceived forgiveness. Taken together, our research presents a novel multidimensional perspective on apology‐giving in the workplace, suggesting that why transgressors apologize can affect their perceptions of reconciliation. Overall, our research highlights the need to incorporate transgressor cognitive and motivational processes into reconciliation research.

Downstream Consequences of Post-Transgression Responses: A Motive-Attribution Framework

“…Apologies, however, are typically considered to be the first step in a dyadic process (e.g., Tavuchis, 1991 ); thus, motive inferences have been thoroughly investigated in contexts where transgressors offer an apology to the victim. Just as expressing forgiveness or punishing the transgressor, offering an apology is an ambiguous action: transgressors who apologize may feel truly sorry and remorseful, or they may simply be trying to avoid punishment (see Mu & Bobocel, 2019 ). A brief review of this work is therefore useful in offering learnings for the current focus on motive attributions in reaction to punishment and forgiveness.…”

Students’ apologizing in Arabic and English: An interlanguage pragmatic case study at an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia

“…To date, interlanguage pragmatics and crosscultural studies have so far examined apology strategies in a variety of cultures and languages, comparing non-native speakers with native speakers (Addiss & Amon, 2019;Banikalef et al, 2015;Chiravate, 2019;Chung & Lee, 2017;Guilfoyle et al, 2019;Hartanto, 2002;Hodeib, 2019;Mu & Bobocel, 2019;Schumann, 2018;Sunstein, 2019).…”

Take a moment to apologize: How and why mindfulness affects apologies.

“…As noted earlier, research on apology falls behind that on forgiveness (Howell et al, 2011), which fails to capture another key element in the relationship repair process (e.g., Rizvi & Bobocel, 2016). For the most part, the literature on apology has focused on its constructive outcomes for transgression victims (e.g., Fehr et al, 2010; Leunissen et al, 2017; Mu & Bobocel, 2019). It is only recently that scholars have begun to understand the process of apologizing from the offender’s perspective (Leunissen et al, 2017).…”

“…More broadly, our research addresses the call for change in how scholars theorize and empirically test the reconciliation process (e.g., Bies et al, 2016; Mu & Bobocel, 2019; Palanski, 2012). Whereas past scholarly work has focused on a victim-centered approach, our research, which implicates the transgressor’s role in the repair process, supports the calls for the dyadic study of reconciliation.…”