Owning it or Feeling it? Blame and Remorse in the Wake of Failure

Abstract

In the wake of negative organizational events, research directs the involved actors to apologize. However, apologies often communicate two, distinct messages: responsibility (they take blame) and regret (they express remorse). Though theoretically and practically distinguishable, taking blame and expressing remorse, independently, have not received much research attention. This leaves an important gap, as organizational actors often do one without the other. My research compares the effectiveness of the two statements following a collective failure. Consistent with hypotheses, Study 1 revealed a preference for blame-taking and documented a reason: taking blame demonstrated more character than expressions of remorse did. Study 2 replicated these effects in a behavioral setting; it also documented a limit: taking blame was less helpful for intentional, versus unintentional, failures. Overall, this research sheds the first light on an important difference between taking blame and expressing remorse. Following a collective failure, people appear to hold a fairly strong preference for blame-taking.