The Goals of Excuses and Communication Strategies Related to Causal Perceptions

Abstract

Three investigations described the contents and goals of excuses, focusing on how these goals can be reached by altering causal perceptions of the recipient of the excuse. It was found that there are three goals of public excuses that can be incorporated within an attributional analysis: to preserve the self-esteem, lessen the anger, and change the expectancies of the receiver of the excuse. These three goals are uniquely linked in attribution theory to three properties of perceived causality: respectively, causal locus, controllability, and stability. Withheld reasons for an event or outcome were internal and controllable (forgetting! negligence and intent), while substantially all communicated excuses were external, uncontrollable, and unstable (e.g., prior commitment, work/study demands). The data suggest that excuse givers follow simple rules when searching for an excuse and that there is a very parsimonious analysis of some excuse-related communications.