Need for social approval and blame assignment

Investigated the relation of the need for social approval (as measured by the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) to the attribution of blame. 40 dyads of female psychiatric nursing students worked on a cooperative task. Both dyad members were exposed to an induced failure experience and made subsequent ratings whereby blame could be ascribed to features of the experiment, transient personal states, and/or to one's partner. As predicted, approval-dependent persons were more likely to rationalize or excuse the "failure" by blaming various experimental factors and/or their partners, but this was always done within the limits of a generalized tendency to seek social acceptance by expressing attitudes complimentary to other persons or situations.