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The Humanities Institute of Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara (Mexico), has carefully crafted its own reading canon by incorporating in to its course design a learning outcomes framework that mirrors its Christian institutional mission. The paper presents an overview of this framework and of its implementation within the University's Gen Ed reading canon selection. It uses an excerpt of Bartolomé de las Casas' Apology as a case example of the practice. This text is used within a course of introductory Ethics delivered to 30 different student groups per year. The criteria used in its selection and suggested practices are detailed. Overall, the text shows the value of a learning outcomes approach to text selection in a core-text-based course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While apology has only a secondary role in restorative justice (RJ), an apology is prevalent in the RJ process. This is promising, but problematic is that there seems to be a gap in the perceived sincerity of apology between victims and offenders. Since less is known about why this gap exists, this paper extends our knowledge about under what conditions a sincere apology is possible in RJ. More specifically, this paper seeks to identify the key components of a sincere apology that are pertinent to RJ as well as the promoting and inhibiting factors for a sincere apology in RJ. This paper provides future research implications about the relationship between RJ and sincere apology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leadership behavior is essential for retaining employees. Using positive actions, leaders engage and motivate followers to allow little or no provision for turnover intentions. Even in case of adverse conduct, supervisors may correct their wrongful behavior by apologizing for their misdeeds, which helps to retain followers. Utilizing self-consistency theory, we explore how organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) is a pivotal mechanism that explains the relationship between employees' perception of supervisor remorse and their turnover intentions, alongside the moderating role of affective commitment. Our analysis of three-wave data collected from employees from Pakistani organizations revealed that perceptions of supervisor remorse decrease turnover intention through strengthening OBSE. Employees' psychological bonding accentuates the mediating role of OBSE with their organization. In general, our research demonstrates a crucial mechanism, employees' self-confidence about their organizational position, through which the effect of perceived supervisor remorse on turnover intention is explained. Also, the findings show how employees' affective commitment acts as a boundary condition invigorating this indirect effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Hume alluded to the politics of slaveholding throughout his career and was among the first to observe that the republican tradition has an awkward relationship with slavery. This article places Hume's critique of Roman slavery in conversation with recent debates over "neo-Roman" liberty, paying special attention to Hume's complaint that some republican advocates for political liberty have also apologized for personal slavery. Most of Hume's direct comments on slaveholding appear in the 1752 essay, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," where Hume criticized Roman slavery for its negative effects on population growth. But more was at stake than ancient demography. Even abolitionists who abhorred Hume's racism still drew upon his argument against ancient slavery—which they read as a commentary on the modern colonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apologies by political leaders to the citizens of a victimized country have attracted attention in recent years as a means of improving relations between nations. Existing studies have identified several elements that make such an apology effective, but from the politician's point of view, it is difficult to issue a statement containing all these elements, and they must then be chosen while considering domestic backlash and relations with countries other than the victimized one. However, it is not sufficiently clear how the victimized country's citizens weigh the elements of the apology when they accept it and how the nature of the harm caused changes this. Therefore, we conducted a survey experiment in Japan, adopting a conjoint design using scenarios depicting fictional US presidential apologies to Japan. Our experiment demonstrated three attributes particularly regarded as important in determining whether people would accept an apology: the reparation amount, whether the apology was official (formality), and the voluntariness of the apology. However, when something that people consider "sacred" has been harmed, reparation proposals are counterproductive, and the optimal apology form may depend on the nature of the harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experiment examined how online support-seeking messages containing anticipatory apology and/or appreciation influence support provision in the U.S. and Korea. The mediating role of regard for face was also assessed. A total of 983 participants (568 in the U.S. sample, 415 in the Korean sample) read and responded to support-seeking messages posted on an interactive online platform. Results showed that support-seeking messages with anticipatory apology and/or appreciation elicited higher quality (in terms of person-centeredness) supportive messages than support-seeking messages without anticipatory apology or appreciation. Participants' perceptions of support-seeker's regard for face mediated the effect of anticipatory apology in support-seeking messages on level of person-centeredness in received support messages. This pattern of findings was observed in both the American and Korean samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stemming from interviews with 151 probation officers in the United States, this study produces a qualitative model that illuminates the extent to and ways in which probation officers draw from principles of Therapeutic Jurisprudence to consider remorse as evidence of a client's potential for rehabilitation (remorse shows "therapeutic guilt" through which an individual being sentenced acknowledges wrongdoings, takes responsibility, and shows behavioral changes) and reconciliation (remorse is a device for "rebalancing power" by shifting responsibility for bad acts away from victims and community, as well as allows the individual being sentenced to seek and receive forgiveness via apologies and "payback") during sentencing. Correspondingly, the model further suggests how these officers use their therapeutic views of remorse to inform their presentencing recommendations for sentencing plans that prioritize community reintegration. Finally, this article discusses the model's implications and the potential adoption of Therapeutic Jurisprudence approaches in sentencing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review research on the topic of trust repair, which has proceeded over the past four decades using three different philosophical mechanisms that provide the bases through which trust is restored by multiple repair tactics. We base our definition of trust repair on the view that trust is "a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based on the positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of another." We define trust repair as any increase in trust above the post-transgression level and complete repair as an increase in trust to the pre-transgression level. We provide an overview of the research designs incorporated in the trust-repair literature and make recommendations and cautions in measuring trust repair. We then summarize the emergence of the different mechanisms behind trust repair, namely, attributional, social equilibrium, and structural mechanisms, and review literature on the related verbal and behavioral repair tactics that can be employed after a transgression. We also provide a review on the process of trust repair, that is, the different stages that unfold to repair trust. We conclude by suggesting that future research should explore trust repair not only from an isolated tactics perspective but also from a broader pathway perspective. Finally, as trust repair occurs over time, future research should also explore the role of differing perceptions of time in the trust-repair process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Generative AI in Technical Communication Research: A Review of Research from 2023 to 2024" published in the Journal of Technical Writing & Communication. The authors of the article discovered that some stylistic changes were inadvertently omitted from the final manuscript, which affected the readability of the text. They have requested the editor to post a revised online version of the paper that includes the editorial changes. The journal apologizes for this error and advises authors to cite the corrected version of the manuscript in the future. [Extracted from the article]

Global heating is associated with historical and contemporary climate racism. Apologies for (climate) racism have the potential to facilitate meaningful discussions about a way forward. However, apologies are complex and can reveal assumptions about privilege. There has been very little work on understanding apologies concerning climate racism. I focus on the apologies received by three Black women activists who (separately) had their images excluded from reporting about their climate activism. The activists alleged that the acts were racist at the individual and systemic levels. I analysed the apologies, online responses, and actions to repair the damage using thematic analysis. I argue that the apologies were not meaningful. Apologies also reveal how privilege operates, including controlling the narrative, drawing on unconscious racism, silence, and ignoring victim reparations. I discuss the importance of apology expectations for climate change from countries in the global North towards the global South. I also discuss the implications for future psychological studies on climate racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a double standard in public responses to scandals: Nonprofits are penalized more harshly than commercial organizations for the same transgression (the "moral disillusionment effect"). However, previous research—focused on commercial organizations—has sometimes shown that a positive reputation can insure organizations against the negative effects of scandals. In light of this, we asked whether a second double standard exists when it comes to trust repair: Can nonprofits regain trust and consumer support more quickly than commercial organizations after apologizing? Two experiments (combined N = 805), considering responses to sexual exploitation and fraud scandals, replicated and extended the moral disillusionment effect. Trust and consumer support were partially restored following an apology (and even a statement acknowledging the scandal without apologizing), but the rate of repair was the same for nonprofits and commercial organizations. Nonprofit managers should therefore implement internal controls to prevent violations and issue public responses when scandals emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When interpersonal harm is inflicted, victims stop seeing themselves as fully human. The tethered humanity hypothesis proposes that victims restore a full human status when perpetrators undertake attempts at reconciliation and victims manage to reestablish the humanness of their perpetrators. In two studies, we tested this hypothesis and manipulated the perpetrators attempts at apologizing for their misconduct. Participants were either included or socially excluded and received a full or self-exonerating apology or a hostile message when they were excluded. Results indicated that victims dehumanized themselves and their ostracizers when they were socially excluded and managed to regain a full human status and rehumanized their perpetrators when a full apology was uttered. Moreover, regression analyses indicated that different humanness judgments (self, other, and meta-humanness) become tethered only when perpetrators apologized, while forgiving the perpetrator always correlated with the rehumanization of the self regardless of the perpetrator's apology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are we to make of the fact that world leaders, such as Canada's Justin Trudeau, have, within the last few decades, offered official apologies for a whole host of past injustices? Scholars have largely dealt with this phenomenon as a moral question, seeing in these expressions of contrition a radical disruption of contemporary neoliberal individualism, a promise of a more humane world. Focusing on Canadian apology politics, this essay instead proposes a nonideal approach to state apologies, sidestepping questions of what they ought to do and focusing instead on their actual functioning as political acts. Through a sociologically informed speech act theory and Foucault's work on power, apology is conceptualized as a speech act with an essentially relational nature. The state, through apologizing, reaffirms the norms governing its relationship to its subjects at a moment when a past transgression threatens to destabilize this relation. From a Foucauldian point of view, the state's power inheres in the very stability of the state–citizen relation, and we should therefore see apologies as defensive moves to protect state hegemony. In the context of Western liberal democracies, such as Canada, apologies embody, rather than challenge, the logic of neoliberal governmentality by suggesting that everything, including resentment against the state, can be managed within the current status quo. Nevertheless, total cynicism about apology politics is not warranted. In many indigenous apology campaigners' demands for contrition we see another side of apologies: their potential to bring about change by enacting counterhegemonic relations to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stereotype content model provides a framework for understanding contextual and relational factors that may explain why some intergroup apologies are ineffective. Using actual and fictional scenarios, we examined whether the apology–forgiveness relationship and the apology–remorse relationship were dependent on the victim-group members' perceived warmth of the offending group. Studies 1 (N = 101) and 2 (N = 109) demonstrated that the perceived warmth of the offending group moderated the influence of apology on forgiveness. The interaction effect between apology and forgiveness and that between apology and perceived remorse were qualified in three-way interactions in Studies 3 (N = 235) and 4 (N = 586). The warmth-by-apology interaction was detectable among those who were highly offended by the incident. In all four experiments, we found an indirect effect of perceived warmth on forgiveness through perceived remorse. The perceived lack of warmth associated with offending groups may help explain the muted effectiveness of intergroup apologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout social work's history, some practitioners and their employing organizations have caused harm. This article explores the concept of moral injury and its relevance to the social work profession. The author explores essential components of a meaningful response to moral injury in social work that simultaneously acknowledges the impact of moral injury on individual victims and addresses the need for structural reform. The author discusses the nature and causes of moral injury, prevention strategies (including the need for practitioner self-care and organizational and community advocacy), the role of apology, restorative justice, and moral courage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is less than a decade since the Irish government published the McAleese Report, which accepted the state's role in facilitating abuse in Catholic Church-run Magdalen Laundries. At the time the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny tearfully apologizing for the state's involvement, alongside promising redress for survivors. Although much has been achieved since that time, one aspect that has not been resolved is how we remember and memorialize that past. Of the 10 Magdalen Laundries that operated in postindependence Ireland, seven have been demolished or substantially redeveloped and three are currently in various degrees of dereliction. This article considers the potential for extant Magdalen Laundries to become sites of conscience. It will explore this potential through the lens of temporality, materiality, and spatiality and will ultimately argue for the need to explore scalar power relations if Magdalen Laundries are to truly reflect past injustices as well as become meaningful places in the contemporary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveys were sent to deans and curriculum leaders of American medical schools regarding the teaching of disclosure and apology in the curriculum. One-hundred six medical schools responded (n = 106; 60% response rate) and results showed that disclosure and apology (also known as communication and resolution programs or CANDOR) is being taught in American medical schools but more work remains to develop consistent curriculum across all medical schools. The same survey (with slightly different wording) was sent to a commercial list of fourth year medical students; two hundred thirty students (n = 230, 17% response rate) representing 67 medical schools completed the survey. The students' data – though not statistically significant – provides a glimpse into students' feeling about this topic, including the desire to learn what happens after "sorry" and how cases can be resolved with disclosure, including the insurance, legal, and compensation aspects. Further avenues of research on this topic are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policing in the United States has a racist history, with negative implications for its legitimacy among African Americans today. Legitimacy is important for policing's effective operations. Community policing may improve policing's legitimacy but is difficult to implement with fidelity and does not address history. An apology for policing's racist history may work as a legitimizing supplement to community policing. On the other hand, an apology may be interpreted as words without changes in practices. Using a survey vignette experiment on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to sample African Americans, this research tests the legitimizing effect of a supplemental apology for historical police racism during a community policing policy announcement. Statistical findings suggest that supplementing the communication with an apology imparted little to no additional legitimacy on policing among respondents. Qualitative data suggested a rationale: Apologies need not indicate future equitable behavior or policy implementation, with implementation itself seeming crucial for police legitimacy improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article titled "Reviewer Acknowledgements" expresses gratitude to the volunteer reviewers who have contributed to the journal Rationality & Society in 2022 and 2023. The reviewers are recognized for their expertise and dedication in evaluating submissions based on their contribution to the field, research soundness, writing clarity, and general interest. The article lists the names of the reviewers, demonstrating the diverse perspectives and backgrounds that have contributed to the journal's excellence and integrity. [Extracted from the article]

This article utilises the work of William Benoit on image repair theory as a framework for examining the crisis communication of Jeremy Corbyn in relation to antisemitism within the Labour Party. By examining the self-defence rhetoric of Corbyn on the antisemitism allegations, the article identifies the following. Of the five strategies for crisis communication, Corbyn was overly reliant on denial, evading responsibility and reducing offensiveness ; struggled to explain his attempts at corrective action ; and reverted to accepting responsibility – that is, apologies – reluctantly and belatedly. Utilising existing perspectives on the most effective strategies for image repair – which emphasise the importance of effective corrective action and accepting responsibility at the expense of denial, evading responsibility and reducing effectiveness – the article argues that Corbyn undermined his own attempts at image repair in the crisis that defined his leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When corporations are confronted with a crisis, well-crafted CEO apologies can serve to repair, restore, and rebuild a damaged corporate image. In prior research, the use of linguistic resources exhibited in CEO corporate apology discourse for different crisis response strategies has not been sufficiently examined. Drawing on the appraisal framework and subsumed linguistic resources, this study analyzed the discursive construction of crisis response strategies in the corporate apology discourse of leading companies listed in the Fortune Global 2000. The findings revealed an integrated use of crisis response strategies in which attitude appraisal resources predominated, while different types of appraisal resources were deployed in various crisis response strategies to achieve rhetorical persuasion in corporate communication. The proposed framework integrating crisis response strategies in CEO apology discourse with appraisal resources could guide CEOs and crisis communicators to use the right words when composing corporate apologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It will knock your socks off, because the ways in which women perceive and understand male-dominated professions like academia and, perhaps more importantly, how they understand I you i as a male academic, can be markedly different than you might think. Then strap yourself in.... B Abstract b This is an open letter to my White-male academic colleagues, whose sometimes well-intentioned attempts to interact with, mentor, or be supportive can come across as tone-deaf to your female colleagues and doctoral students. Can you imagine a female academic of color walking up to a White-male faculty member and telling him, "Hey congratulations on being hired, they have really been looking to hire White guys these days.". [Extracted from the article]

In recent years, we have witnessed a tide of government apologies for historic laws criminalising homosexuality. Complicating a conventional view of state apologies as a progressive effort to come to terms with past mistakes, queer theoretical frameworks help to elucidate the power effects and self-serving nature of the new politics of regret. We argue that through the discourse of gay apology, the state extolls pride in its present identity by expressing shame for its 'homophobic past'. In doing so, it discounts the possibility that systemic homophobia persists in the present. Through a critical discourse analysis of the 'world first' gay apology from the parliament of the Australian state of Victoria in 2016, we identify five key themes: the inexplicability of the past, the individualisation of homophobia, the construction of a 'post-homophobic' society, the transformation of shame into state pride and subsuming the 'unhappy queer' through the expectation of forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how language used by advice recipients and whether the peer apologized before offering advice affected advice outcomes. Participants wrote about a problem and then shared the problem through online chat with a peer (who was actually an experimental confederate). Although the participant was expecting the peer to share a problem as well and stated they did not want advice, the peer gave advice. Use of future tense verbs by the recipient in problem descriptions reduced implementation intention, perceived efficacy of advice, perceived approbation of advice, and perception of advice as confirming. This supports research that planning, operationalized through use of future tense verbs, reduces receptiveness to advice. Participants who used more I and we pronouns had lower intentions to implement advice. Contrary to hypotheses, use of apologies by the advisor for giving unwanted advice did not affect implementation intentions and increased reported negative emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the psychological and behavioral consequences of making a communication error in expressive crisis negotiations and instrumental suspect interviews. During crisis negotiation (n = 133) or suspect interview (n = 68) training, Dutch police and probation officers received preparation material that led them to make a factual, judgment, or no error. Across both studies, errors increased officers' negative affect, with errors leading to more stress in crisis negotiations and more distraction in suspect interviews. When comparing factual with judgment errors, factual errors led to more distraction in crisis negotiations and more negative affect in suspect interviews. Analysis of the transcribed dialogues identified four categories of response: apologize, exploration, deflect, and no alignment. Of these, negotiators used all four regularly, whereas interviewers predominantly used exploration and deflect. Our findings revealed the potentially negative effects of errors on officers and offered insights into how they could best focus to induce an appropriate response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retractions of journal articles exclude fraudulent or erroneous research from legitimate science and perform boundary work. Analyzing retractions from different disciplines and focusing on their apologetic aspects, we find that these apologies shift between openly addressing emotional, normative, and social themes and concealing them in a more scientific style of communication. Their boundary work remains highly ambivalent: They alternate between scientific and nonscientific forms of speaking, portray unstable patterns of control and coercion, and avoid drawing a boundary between legitimate and nonlegitimate science. In line with the hypothetical nature of scientific knowledge, retractions thus leave boundary making to the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research largely supports the apology–forgiveness cycle, a process in which perpetrators' post-transgression apologies are reciprocated with victims' forgiveness. This cycle is often facilitated by the mere provision of an apology. Yet, there are times in which apologies may be rejected. We hypothesised that when apologies matched victims' apology preferences (i.e., congruent apologies), victims would be more likely to accept them and self-report higher levels of forgiveness. Using an autobiographical transgression-recall approach, participants (n = 102) provided self-report ratings on the apology they preferred receiving, the severity of the transgression, the type of apology they actually received from perpetrators, whether or not they accepted the apology offered to them, and forgiveness. Victims were more likely to accept apologies and report higher levels of forgiveness when perpetrators offered apologies that were congruent with victims' preferred apologies, particularly apologies that met victims' needs for empathy. The findings not only provide support for the apology–forgiveness cycle but also signify the importance of delivering apologies that meet the psychological needs of victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether perceived entitativity of a group (i.e., how much it is seen as a unit) influences how its apologies are perceived. Because entitative groups are assigned agency and collective responsibility and their members are viewed as interchangeable, their apologies were hypothesized to appear more sincere and less due to ulterior motives. This effect emerged with small groups apologizing for minor grievances (Studies 1 and 2), although not always if the apology came from a leader (vs. the whole group). In Study 3, these benefits of entitativity extended to greater liking for the more entitative group, and in the case of a government apologizing for international harm. Whereas past research has emphasized the harmful impact outgroup entitativity can have on intergroup relations, these studies suggest entitativity can have benefits when the intergroup behavior is a beneficial one (e.g., apology). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to integrate the central constructs in the face-negotiation theory in the examination of the antecedents and behavioral consequences of forgiveness in relational transgressions in U.S. and Chinese cultures. Results indicated that in both cultures, transgression victims' independent self-construal and self-face concern were negatively associated, whereas their interdependent self-construals and other-face concerns were positively associated, with forgiveness, and offender apology was positively associated with forgiveness. Forgiveness had a positive relationship with reconciliation but a negative relationship with revenge in both cultures. The hypothesized model in which forgiveness mediated the relationships of antecedents on reconciliation and revenge fit the data well in both cultural samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how transnational cultural flows such as K-pop create intensified regional dynamics and conflicts by looking at a specific case called the 'Tzuyu incident'. A young Taiwanese member, Chou Tzuyu, of the K-pop girl band TWICE apologized for waving a Republic of China's flag on a Korean TV show in an apology video released on JYP Entertainment's official YouTube channel. The video soon went viral among K-pop fans around the globe, especially in Taiwan, China, and Korea, creating a transnational discursive space that vividly captures the complex dynamics among various actors such as the local media, the transnational entertainment corporation, fans, as well as the artists. Through a close inspection of the apology video made by Tzuyu and JYP entertainment, as well as the responses generated in China and Taiwan, this article examines the complicated power dynamics of a variety of players involved in the production and consumption of K-pop. The article argues that geopolitics in the Tzuyu incident is manifested in gendered narratives, showing the uneven power relations between the entertainment company, consumers, and the artist as well as that between China and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Comparing Standard Setting Methods for Objective Structured Clinical Examinations in a Caribbean Medical School." The authors have identified an error in their statement of ethics approval and patient consent. They have removed a sentence from the Methods section regarding informed consent and confidentiality of information about participants. The Xavier University School of Medicine, which granted ethical approval for the study, confirms that this modification does not affect the overall conclusions of the study and did not violate any research ethics. The authors apologize for the error. [Extracted from the article]

Many scholars have studied the role of organizational apologies in crisis communication, but they have defined and operationalized apologies inconsistently. This study uses a grounded theory approach to explore what constitutes an effective organizational apology from the perspective of organizational stakeholders. One hundred participants were asked to imagine being the victims of a data breach at an online retailer and to write the kind of apology they would like to receive from the organization. One hundred more participants were asked to write suggestion lists for how the organization could make its apology effective. These data were analyzed using a constant comparative method. Fifteen apology elements were identified and organized along two dimensions: (a) whether the element involved primarily words or behavior and (b) whether the element focused on fixing the problem or rebuilding relationships. Based on the data, these elements must be combined to make an apology effective with stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We hypothesized that narcissists would be unwilling to apologize for their interpersonal transgressions, and that reduced levels of self-reported empathy and guilt would serially mediate this effect. Narcissism is characterized by little empathy for the victim, which reduces guilt about one's transgressions. Low guilt, in turn, is associated with unwillingness to apologize. In Study 1, we assessed dispositional narcissism, empathy, guilt, and willingness to apologize. In Study 2, we assessed dispositional narcissism and obtained state measures of empathy, guilt, and willingness to apologize. In Study 3, we manipulated narcissism and collected state measures of empathy, guilt, and willingness to apologize. Narcissism was negatively associated with (Studies 1-2) and decreased (Study 3) willingness to apologize, with this link being explained (i.e., serially mediated) by low empathy and guilt. Finally, in Study 4, we showed that antagonistic narcissism (i.e., narcissistic rivalry), but not agentic narcissism (i.e., narcissistic admiration), was negatively associated with willingness to apologize and apologizing behaviour. In all, narcissists are unwilling to apologize for their transgressions, as they experience little empathy for their victims and lower guilt. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to draw attention to the narcissistic dimensions of the reconciliation movement in Australia and, more specifically, to the way in which the desire to ‘make innocent’ compromises the attempt to ‘make amends’ and construct a just polity. Building upon some early work by Anthony Moran (1998) and Elizabeth Povinelli (1998), it sets out to defend two claims: firstly, that the intensity of the desire for reconciliation in Australia (and conceivably in other settler colonial states as well) is attributable to the sense of shame arising from the collapse of the national ego ideal; and secondly, that the real target of the reparative efforts undertaken under the auspices of reconciliation is the healing of the ‘narcissistic injury’ inflicted by the failure of the assimilation project and the assertion of Aboriginal separateness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma demands a melancholic orientation to the past, a wish to recover what is lost. In conflicts located in long histories of political difference, a focus on the traumas acquired through the violences of the past is crucial, but this focus may do more than inform the politics of the present. The risk is that the symptoms of the trauma become the symptoms of policy. The political environment that emerges lacks the maturity to understand the ordinary emotions of politics and this further limits the possibility of creative political horizons. In short, in the interests of placating trauma survivors and sometimes in the interests of ensuring no issue gets left behind, politics can be trumped by trauma. Here, we discuss how this has occurred in Northern Ireland and how the 'trauma' of non-indigenous Australians has trumped the possibility of addressing the 'unfinished business of justice' for Indigenous Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Robin Williams’ death, outspoken punk rocker Henry Rollins published an LA Weekly column about his disdain for people who commit suicide. His comments about depression were immediately condemned as ignorant and hurtful. In an effort to make amends for his offensive remarks, Rollins delivered an apology that featured all three elements of the rhetoric of atonement: repentance, prayer, and charity. Analysis of Rollins’ discourse suggests important implications for the literature surrounding apologetic discourse. This essay questions whether rhetors must explicitly ask for public forgiveness in order to demonstrate repentance and highlights the language of service as a meaningful element of charity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A modest proposal of a sporting analogy is offered as methodological fiction about the democratization of research and the great mission such an ideal places upon qualitative inquiry. With apologies to Jonathan Swift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is well-established that interpersonal apologies promote forgiveness, the apology–forgiveness link at the intergroup level is more tenuous. A possible reason for this tenuous relationship is that many intergroup apologies focus on the offender group’s feelings about the transgression as opposed to the victimized group’s suffering. In this spirit, we manipulated focus of a collective apology in two experiments. Consistent with predictions, a victim-focused apology (relative to offender-focused apology) heightened perceptions of offender group remorse, perceived empathy of the offender group, and trust in the offender. In turn, perceptions of remorse, empathy, and trust uniquely increased intergroup forgiveness. Results have implications for facilitating restorative effects between groups in situations of social injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined the effects of structural conditions on perceptions of and responses to an apology offered by an advantaged majority group to a disadvantaged minority group. We used the dramatic regional changes of the Arab Spring to manipulate the instability of status relations between Israeli Arabs and Jews. In two studies, we found that under instability (vs. control), both Israeli Jews (advantaged group members; Study 1) and Israeli Arabs (disadvantaged group members; Study 2) perceived an apology offered to the Arab minority by the Israeli Prime Minister as insincere and manipulative (i.e., intended to serve the Jews rather than the Arabs). Perceived insincerity, in turn, led to reduced forgiveness and conciliatory tendencies among Israeli Arabs (Study 2). These findings shed light on how structural factors might render group apologies counterproductive in promoting positive intergroup relations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the mediating role of victims' embarrassment in explaining why apologies from transgressors sometimes affect victims' reported forgiveness, but not actual forgiveness tow a rd transgressors. Victims sometimes insincerely communicate forgiveness following a transgressor's apology because they feel put on the spot and embarrassed and try to escape the awkwardness of such situations. The results of an online experiment supported our hypothesis by showing that victim embarrassment mediated the relation between a transgressor's apology and victims' reported forgiveness but not between a transgressor's apology and victims' experienced forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, U.S. and other Western media have inundated the public with celebrity apologies. The public (measured via representative opinion polls) then expresses clear ideas about who deserves forgiveness. Is forgiveness highly individualized or tied to broader social, cultural, and cognitive factors? To answer this question, we analyzed 183 celebrity apologies offered between October 1, 2000, and October 1, 2012. Results are twofold and based in both cultural and social psychological perspectives. First, we found that public forgiveness is systematically tied to discursive characteristics of apologies—particularly sequential structures. Certain sequences appear to cognitively prime the public, creating associative links to established cultural scripts of atonement and rendering some apologies more successful than others. Second, public forgiveness is contingent on broader patterns of social interaction. Like many persuasive messages, successful apologies exist as ordered cultural moments steeped in characteristics of the social relations that bind offenders, victims, and a broader audience of onlookers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since Virginia’s legislative resolution apologizing for slavery in 2007, Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina as well as the U.S. House and Senate passed unprecedented legislative resolutions apologizing for their role in the perpetuation of enslavement. This article analyzes the apology resolutions of eight states as well as those of the U.S. House and Senate to argue that their failure to recognize the historical and ongoing effects of the European Slave Trade and slavery on the United States as a whole and, most importantly, the status and well-being of African Americans, or provide any concrete remedial measure raises questions about whether or not they were designed to actually atone for these atrocities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How pathologists communicate an error is complicated by the absence of a direct physician–patient relationship. Using 2 examples, we elaborate on how other physician colleagues routinely play an intermediary role in our day-to-day transactions and in the communication of a pathologist error to the patient. The concept of a “dual-hybrid” mind-set in the intermediary physician and its role in representing the pathologists’ viewpoint adequately is considered. In a dual-hybrid mind-set, the intermediary physician can align with the patients’ philosophy and like the patient, consider the smallest deviation from norm to be an error. Alternatively, they might embrace the traditional physician philosophy and communicate only those errors that resulted in a clinically inappropriate outcome. Neither may effectively reflect the pathologists’ interests. We propose that pathologists develop strategies to communicate errors that include considerations of meeting with the patients directly. Such interactions promote healing for the patient and are relieving to the well-intentioned pathologist. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research on intergroup helping has shown that offers of help from a high- to a low-status group can be responded to negatively by members of the low-status group. The current research, consisting of two studies, explored factors that can influence how helping by a high-status group is responded to and how much it is sought by members of a low-status group, specifically considering the roles of intergroup trust and apologies in this process. Study 1 investigated reactions of Israeli-Arabs to help offered by Israeli-Jews. Study 2 examined willingness of Israeli-Arabs to seek help from Israeli Jews. Converging results across the two experiments showed that responses to assistance were most positive and helping was most strongly sought when there was an explicit apology by a representative of the outgroup for a recent transgression and Israeli-Arab participants had a relatively high level of intergroup trust. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the interactive relationship between apology, as a crisis-response strategy used in the current Toyota recall crisis, and product involvement in influencing the restoration of the organization’s reputation and customers’ future purchase intentions. The authors measured the impact of the interaction between participants’ perception of an apology and their product-involvement levels using a 2 (perception of apology: high sincerity vs. low sincerity) × 2 (product involvement: high vs. low) experiment design. The results showed that an apology was an effective strategy for repairing the organization’s reputation for those participants who were highly involved and perceived the strategy as highly sincere, but it did not increase their purchase intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the cultural differences in the usage of apologies and thanks in favor asking messages between the U.S. and Japan. It explores three studies, wherein participants in the first study created an email message for a favor asking situation while participants in the second and third studies accomplished a questionnaire on a prototype of an email message. Furthermore, the results showed that apologies in messages are used more in Japan while thanks are used more in the U.S.

This article investigates whether or not reconciliation for historical wrongs can be realized in the absence of a state apology. States have traditionally been notoriously reluctant to apologize for their past crimes, and this has often meant that victims are unable to attain closure while they are still alive. What, then, are the alternatives? This article examines the case of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery, which was held in 2000. The Tribunal was organized primarily by non-governmental organizations: its judgements were neither legally binding, nor was the Tribunal capable of issuing a ‘sincere’ apology that was the equivalent of a state apology. Nevertheless, this article makes the case that faced with the fact that the Japanese state has not always been forthcoming in acknowledging and taking legal responsibility for its past wrongs, such private, non-state attempts may constitute the best chance for us to accord some victims of war crimes some sense of closure for their past suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Making apologies is one of the ways that governments have attempted to deal with past injustices. However, political apologies are often criticised for being meaningless or morally suspect. I will argue that an apology signals the commitment of those who make it, sponsor it and support it to a national undertaking, and whether we can regard an apology as meaningful depends on our reasons for thinking that this undertaking has been initiated and will continue. To defend political apologies from moral criticisms it is necessary to address questions about responsibility: whether citizens can and should take responsibility for past injustices, including injustices of the historical past. The answer to these questions, I will argue, requires an account of the responsibilities entailed in being a citizen of an intergenerational polity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the growing use of apologies in post-conflict settings, cases of non-apology remain unaddressed and continue to puzzle scholars. This article focuses on the absence of apology by non-state and anti-state actors by examining the case of the Cypriot armed group EOKA, which has refused to offer an apology to the civilian victims of its ‘anti-colonial’ struggle (1955–1959). Using field data and parliamentary debates, and drawing on comparisons, this article analyses the factors that contributed to a lack of apology. It is argued that the inherited timelessness of Greek nationalism, and the impression of a perpetual need for defence, set up textbook conditions for the development of a hegemonic discourse and prevented an apology for human rights violations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]