Apologies: Japanese and American styles

Abstract

This is the third in a series of investigations of the interactional styles of Japanese and Americans. A series of semistructured interviews was used to identify critical cultural variables affecting the forms of apologies in both countries. In so far as possible these were incorporated into a Form of Apology Questionnaire. This instrument, in random and ordered forms, proved to be a highly reliable instrument for assessing such behavior in the two cultures. Japanese and Americans clearly differed in their manner of coping with social situations in which one person, consciously or unconsciously, harmed another: the Japanese preferring to apologize directly, without explaining their actions, employed a wider range of apologies and adapted more to the status of their partners; the Americans also preferred to apologize directly, but more often offered explanations to justify their acts and adapted their manner of apologizing less to the status to their partners. These differences in communicative style appear to reflect deeper cultural dynamics and psychic differences in the structure of the personality in the two countries.