Better late than early: The influence of timing on apology effectiveness☆
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty-four volunteer undergraduates at Williams College (7 males, 16 females) were recruited to participate in a study on “Apology and Conflict.” They received a candy bar for their participation.
Procedure
After providing their informed consent, participants received a questionnaire that contained all the instructions. First, they were asked to describe on a blank page “a recent conflict (within the last six months) you have had with another individual … in which you felt you were wronged, and also in
Study 2
The results of Study 1 support our hypotheses. Because our results were correlational, however, the causal relations among the variables that we measured were unclear. For example, people who express themselves more often during a conflict may receive later apologies because they have annoyed the offender, or because all their talking kept the offender from apologizing earlier. If so, then voice affects the timing of apologies, rather than the other way around.
Because of these concerns, we ran
Discussion
In Study 1, apologies that occurred later in a conflict were more effective, in the sense that they were associated with greater outcome satisfaction. There was also some evidence that voice and understanding mediate the relationship between apology timing and apology effectiveness.
In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated the timing of apologies, and replicated the results from Study 1. We found that a later apology, occurring after voice and understanding, was more effective than an early
References (23)
- et al.
Consumer responses to service failures: Influence of procedural and interactional fairness perceptions
Journal of Business Research
(1992) Norms of apology depicted in U.S. American and Japanese literature on manners and etiquette
International Journal of Intercultural Relations
(1998)- et al.
The molderator-mediator variable distionction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(1986) - et al.
“I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I?”: A study of the identity implications and constraints that apologies create for their recipients
Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social
(1994) - et al.
Victims’ responses to apologies: The effects of offender responsibility and offense severity
Journal of Social Psychology
(1994) Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame? Catharsis, rumination, distraction, anger, and aggressive responding
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
(2002)Redefining ripeness: A social-psychological perspective
Journal of Peace Psychology
(1997)- et al.
Children’s reactions to transgressions: Effects of the actor’s apology, reputation and remorse
British Journal of Social Psychology
(1989) - Frantz, C. M., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1999). Seeing both sides: Lessons from conflict narratives. Poster presented at the...
Relations in public
(1971)
A cross-cultural study of preference of accounts: Relationship closeness, harm severity, and motives of account making
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Cited by (0)
- ☆
The authors thank Molly Burnett, Sarah Zilzer, Dick Moreland, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
- 1
Present address: Severance Hall, Department of Psychology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074, United States.