Getting out of hot water: Facework in social predicaments.

Abstract

Participants wrote accounts to victims of social predicaments. Results showed that autonomous perpetrators offered more mitigation, used more complexity in accounts, and used fewer lies, especially to acquaintances. High blame was associated with less mitigating and complex accounts and greater deception; this occurred despite perpetrators' understanding of probable relationship harm. Women were more concerned with repairing others' face damage, at least in part to preserve relationships; their self-esteem also was more harmed by lack of forgiveness, especially from friends. Perpetrators gave longer, more mitigating and complex accounts to friends and more mitigating accounts to high-status victims. Participants who used aggravating elements expected more positive relationships. Results are discussed in terms of competing demands for facework.

On psychological growth and vulnerability: Basic psychological need satisfaction and need frustration as a unifying principle.

“…This lower threshold for threat among autonomy-primed individuals in turn explained their better performance on a subsequent task. Further, Hodgins, Liebeskind, and Schwartz (1996) showed that autonomy-oriented individuals provided fewer lies Need Frustration and Vulnerability 24 and more mitigating themes (e.g., concessions and excuses) after offending someone than those with a controlled orientation. Knee and Zuckerman (1996) showed that control-oriented relative to autonomy-oriented individuals displayed greater self-serving bias, as manifested in their tendency to adopt a self-aggrandizing attitude after success and to deny responsibility for failure.…”

Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships.

“…For instance, a high-quality relationship partner can offer painful but true criticisms of an individual in such a way that it is interpreted as being "for one's own good," whereas similar criticisms by a partner in a lower quality relationship might be interpreted as having been cruel and inappropriate. Third, in high-quality relationships, offenders might be more likely to apologize or communicate remorse (verbally or nonverbally) and attempt to remediate the effects of their offense than would offenders in noncommitted relationships (Hodgins, Liebeskind, & Schwartz, 1996). Presumably, offenders in committed relationships have much more to lose by the dissolution of their relationship, so we expect that they would engage in efforts to confess and apologize for their wrongdoings.…”

Perceived Approval of Friends and Parents as Mediators of the Relationship Between Self-Determination and Drinking

“…Consequently individuals who are higher on autonomy approach relationships with an orientation toward growth and mutual support in fulfi lling their own as well as others' basic psychological needs (Hodgins and Knee, 2002;Knee et al, 2002). Moreover, autonomy may be associated with less risk-related behaviors because autonomous individuals are focused on intrinsic values that are inconsistent with risk behaviors (Neighbors et al, 2007a) and because the infl uences that close others have on them tend to be more supportive of healthier behaviors (Hodgins et al, 1996a;Hodgins et al, 1996b). It is important to note that, although autonomy and controlled orientations may seem to be conceptually on opposite ends of the same spectrum, they have most often been found to either be uncorrelated (Deci and Ryan, 1985) or positively correlated (e.g., Knee and Neighbors, 2002;Knee et al, 2002).…”

“…Autonomous individuals are also infl uenced by others but typically in more autonomy-supportive and less reactive ways (Hodgins et al, 1996a;Hodgins et al, 1996b). Consequently individuals who are higher on autonomy approach relationships with an orientation toward growth and mutual support in fulfi lling their own as well as others' basic psychological needs (Hodgins and Knee, 2002;Knee et al, 2002).…”