Two studies examined the effects of offender blameworthiness, consequence severity, and offender gender on written accounts provided after a hypothetical predicament. Participants imagined themselves as the offending party in a predicament and provided written accounts after their victims' reproach. Accounts were coded using Schonbach's (1980) account taxonomy. Study 1 results showed that although concessionary strategies were the most prevalent overall, they were more prevalent for more blameworthy offenses than less blameworthy offenses. Women's accounts were more complex than men's, especially for more blameworthy offenses. In Study 2, in which 3 levels of blameworthiness were used, offenders proffered significantly more concessions after negligent acts than after either accidental or intentional acts, producing a curvilinear pattern. Again, accounts of men and women differed, with men proffering fewer and less complex concessions and more lies than did women. Deviations from politeness theory predictions are explained by reference to face-saving tensions inherent in social predicaments, tensions absent in less problematic social encounters."For the wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23) Portions of the research reported here were presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago. This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid of Research from the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota to Marti Hope Gonzales.We are grateful to Connie Lawrence, Jay Sieler, and Jordan Moe for their assistance in data collection and to Connie Lawrence for her voluminous typewritten transcriptions of participants' written accounts. We are also indebted to three anonymous reviewers whose valuable comments and suggestions are reflected in this article.

Examined the effects of offender sex, offender status, and consequence severity on accounts following an embarrassing predicament. Subjects were induced to believe they had committed a gaffe with either relatively mild or severe consequences for a confederate/victim of either higher or lower status than they, and their verbal and nonverbal behaviors captured on videotape served as the source of dependent variable measures. Verbal accounts were coded using Schonbach's (1980) account taxonomy. Nonverbal behaviors were also coded, as were measures of subjects' verbal and behavioral helping. Results showed a main effect for sex on account length (p < .001), number of concessionary elements (p < .001), and verbal helping scores (p = .001). Mitigating accounts were proffered more than aggravating accounts. Two-way interactions among sex, status, account type, and severity also were obtained.Social interactions do not always proceed smoothly. More often than we would like to think, we say or do something we and/or others wish we had not said or done, or fail to say or do something we and/or others wish we had, that is, when norms or role-based expectations are violated or when untoward acts are intentionally or unintentionally committed. Because such disruptions in otherwise fluid social encounters occur frequently, they have received a great deal of attention from microsociologists, psychologists, and sociolinguists alike (e.g.,

The authors conducted 3 studies to test a socioecological model of procommunity action. Study 1 showed that residents of stable communities purchased a "critical habitat" license plate to support preservation of the environment in their home state more often than did residents of mobile communities. Study 2 demonstrated that home game baseball attendance was less dependent on the team's record in stable cities than in mobile cities. Study 3, an experiment, showed that residential stability had a causal impact on procommunity behavior. Moreover, the effect of stability was partially mediated by identification with the "community." Together, these studies indicate that residential stability can lead to stronger identification with one's community, which, in turn, leads to more procommunity behaviors.

This study examined self-presentation strategies in the personals ads of heterosexual and homosexual men and women. Ads were coded for physical descriptors and offers of and appeals for attractiveness, financial security, expressiveness, instrumentality, sincerity, and sexual activities. The interaction of gender and sexual orientation was often the best predictor of ad contents. Specifically, (a) gay men emphasized physical characteristics most and lesbians least; (b) heterosexual women mentioned attractiveness more than lesbians did; (c) women solicited more expressive traits and offered more instrumental traits than men; (d) gay men mentioned sexuality more than other advertisers; and (e) heterosexuals were more likely than homosexuals to pursue long-term relationships and to mention sincerity and financial security. The advantages of using personals ads as a source of data about self-presentation, societal definitions of attractiveness, and changing social forces are discussed.

A quasi‐experiment was conducted to determine if the effectiveness of the R.C.S. Home Energy Audit Program could be improved by training auditors to use social‐psychological principles during the audit procedure. Nine experienced home energy auditors attended two 1‐day workshops in which they were trained to: (a) communicate vividly; (b) personalize their recommendations to homeowners; (c) induce commitment; and (d) frame their recommendations in terms of “loss” rather than “gain”. The effectiveness of the trained auditors was compared with a control group of experienced auditors who did not receive specific training. Both telephone interview data and utility company records pointed to the success of the auditor training. In interviews, customers served by the trained auditors reported a greater likelihood of acting on the auditors' recommendations, and a large number of these customers reported applying for utility programs to finance retrofits. Utility records validated these customer claims: A significantly larger number of customers served by trained auditors actually did apply for retrofit finance programs. A longitudinal measure of actual energy consumption showed no difference between experimental and control households. Taken as a whole, these findings demonstrate the potential for using principles uncovered in the social psychological laboratory to design applied interventions.