The Effectiveness of Accounts Following Transgression

This study examined the relative effectiveness of excuses and justifications in ameliorating negative evaluations following transgression. Subjects read fictitious newspaper reports of a senator's transgression (either accepting a bribe or soliciting a prostitute) that occurred in either a work-related or work-unrelated context, together with either an excuse or a justification offered by the senator. Subjects made judgments concerning the senator's responsibility for the act, his character, the wrongness of the act, and the acceptability of his account. Excuses reduced responsibility attributions while justifications reduced the perceived wrongness of the act. On some measures, the senator's character was perceived less negatively when he offered an excuse than when he offered a justification. Finally the normativeness of the particular account, rather than its believability, was most predictive of the effectiveness of the account.