Evasion Of Responsibility Research Articles

Christopher L. Schilling, The Myth of Psychology and the Evasion of Responsibility

Christopher L. Schilling, The Myth of Psychology and the Evasion of Responsibility

Image repair strategies in trump's self-defending speech in response to indictment: A pragmatic perspective

The present study examines the image repair strategies employed by former President Trump as a public response to the indictment against him in his (2023) Mar-a-Lago speech after his arrest and arraignment in New York court, which indicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The current study aims at analyzing the types of image repair strategies and tactics employed as defense strategies to repair the damaged public image, identifying the types of speech acts used for realizing these strategies pragmatically according to the eclectic model developed for the analysis. The analysis reveals that three types of image repair strategies are used, namely: Denial, evasion of responsibility, and reduction of offensiveness, in which reduction of offensiveness is the most achieved strategy through the tactic of attacking the accuser as the frequently employed tactic, followed by the denial strategy in Trump's speech. The realization of image repair tactics as pragmatic strategies is through triggering speech acts, the most frequently utilized SAs are the expressive SAs of criticizing and blaming, and the representative SAs of denying and accusing, that are used to realize the tactics of attack the accuser, simple denial and shift the blame pragmatically as SAs.

Narrating the Sociocultural Experience and Management of Stigma Related to Military Caregiving

ABSTRACT Despite accelerating the recovery and rehabilitation of wounded veterans and saving the U.S. substantial sums in avoided long-term care costs, military caregivers (MCs) are an underserved community lacking resources and support. On top of managing a variety of emotional, physical, relational, and occupational challenges, MCs experience stigma. Indeed, caregiving can be a stigmatized task, especially for military-affiliated individuals who may be expected to adhere to cultural norms of personal sacrifice and resilience in the face of adversity. The current study uses narrative inquiry to better understand the unique experiences and characteristics of MCs providing care for veterans experiencing posttraumatic stress. Specifically, this study examined MCs’ narratives to uncover the sociocultural experience and management of stigma related to military caregiving. Interviews with 15 military caregivers of veterans experiencing PTS demonstrated that military caregivers experienced stigma for 1) staying in the relationship, 2) enabling the veteran, 3) mismanaging the condition, and 4) flaking on plans and relationships. In response to stigma, MCs often challenged stigma through strategies of denial or evasion of responsibility. This study contributes to communication scholarship by introducing co-stigma management and further interrogating processes related to stigma management communication. In addition, the results can inform Veteran Affairs (VA) healthcare, caregiver assistance programs, health practices, and support-seeking behaviors.

Rubber genocide in Joyce and Beckett: from Roger Casement’s Congo to Vél d’Hiv and Auschwitz

This essay argues that the political imaginations of both James Joyce and Samuel Beckett were shaped by their familiarity with Roger Casement’s official reports on the catastrophic atrocities that accompanied rubber extraction in the Congo Free State (1904) and Putumayo Amazon (1912). Joyce recognized the depopulation in the Congo as of a structural pattern with Ireland’s long history under British imperialism. But in Dubliners, Joyce clothes characters in consumer rubber to ask whether pursuing much-needed Irish autonomy through economic liberalism also risks backsliding into structural racism. Beckett extends the ethics of Joyce’s racial critique to Le dépeupleur (The Lost Ones), in which novella a “little people” are housed in a rubber cylinder. Here an anthropological narrator describes with French colonial tropes and humanist education why this entire population should die. Beckett’s story borrows elements from Casement and Joyce. But it also takes structure and detail from Vél d’Hiv and Drancy, Parisian holding camps for rounded-up Jews, who were then transported to Auschwitz. (Exterminatory labour from Auschwitz III-Monowitz built a factory to produce synthetic rubber, still in use today.) Beckett reworks Joyce’s caution to confront French society with its complicity in Nazi genocide, an evasion of responsibility that he suggests was prepared in colonial racism and the evisceration of intention in humanist and liberal logics. This essay shows, then, an Irish modernist tradition grappling with an ethical basis for understanding comparative genocide.

Crisis communication for public organizations: Examining Pakistan Railways' use of information technology and social media for image repair

AbstractThis study examines the induction of information technology and the use of image‐repair focused crisis response strategies on social media by Pakistan Railways amid a recent crisis. A mix‐method based content analysis (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) to investigate whether and if so, how Pakistan Railways used Benoit's suggested image restoration strategies on social media to repair its image among customers and in print media. Our results show that Pakistan Railways predominantly used reducing the offensiveness of event (40%), followed by corrective action (34.6%), evasion of responsibility (10.6%), denial (8%) and mortification (6.4%) strategies, respectively. In addition, the use of image‐repair focused crisis response strategies significantly varied by social media platform. An analysis of the publics' emotions found in their online comments reveals that, during the course of the organizational crisis communication, negative public emotions gradually subsided into ambivalent ones; and contrary to a highly negative newspaper coverage tone in the beginning of the crisis, the introduction of the Twitter handle has associated with more positive media coverage afterward. Theoretical and practical implications, especially the need for advancing social‐mediated crisis response effectiveness in developing countries, are discussed.

The Influence of the Factor of Providing Additional Contact Information by the Client on the Outcome of the Transaction in Telemarketing

The subject of the study is the search for the relationship between the provision of additional information by the client and the success of the transaction. The more information the client is willing to provide, the higher his interest in purchasing a product or service and the less likely it is to refuse after a preliminary agreement. Special attention is paid to the most common reasons for refusals, such as the inability to get through to the client, refusal dictated by close people, cases when the client changed his mind without explicitly stating the reason. Based on the methods of mathematical statistics, confirmations of the hypotheses put forward about the absence of a significant influence of the fact of providing additional contact information by the client on the outcome of transactions in general were obtained, but its significant influence in certain classes of refusals was confirmed. The importance of studying the model of making a purchase decision among the client's inner circle is substantiated. The novelty of the research lies in the detailed analysis of particular cases of failure and the mathematical justification of the hypotheses put forward. The main conclusion based on the results of the study is that additional information from the client is an intangible pledge that reinforces the desire to purchase a product or service. Additional information about another person indicates an evasion of responsibility or a hidden refusal. The results confirm the words said by psychologist Boris Mikhailovich Teplov that despite his individuality, a person is under the influence of society and acts in certain social conditions. It is necessary to analyze the client's refusal without interrupting the models of his interaction with other persons influencing the purchase decision.

Особенности самопрезентации российских учителей с разным уровнем эмпатии

Introduction. The modern educator needs to master new forms and methods of effective communication in his or her professional life. The problem of teachers' self-efficacy and successful self-presentation tactics is very relevant. In this regard, it becomes productive to study the relationship of empathy with self-presentation strategies and teaching styles among school teachers. The purpose of the article was to determine the relationship of empathy with the tactics of self-presentation of teachers. The main research methods are the “Teacher Empathy Scale” (Wang, et al, 2022), the questionnaire “Teacher Roles Scale” (Stojiljković, et al, 2012) and the questionnaire “Scale of self-presentation tac-tics” (Lee, et al, 1999). 116 teachers from the regions of Russia took part in the survey, 94.5% of them were women. SPSS 19.0 programs were used for data processing. Re-search results: the most common tactics of self-presentation among Russian teachers are apology, role model and renunciation. Among the least popular are bullying, negative evaluation of others, exaggeration of their achievements. The tactics of self-presentation were associated with the level of empathy: the closest relationship was revealed with the tactics of “attractive behavior” and “request/ plea”. The tactics of self-presentation turned out to be interrelated with the teaching roles: the pedagogical role is intercon-nected with the tactics of “hindering oneself” and “communicating one's achievements”, as well as “an example to follow”. The motivational role is interconnected with the tac-tics of “hindering oneself”, the cognitive-diagnostic role is interconnected with the tac-tics of “role model”. The role in affective interaction is interrelated with the tactics of self-presentation: “justification with denial of responsibility”, “justification with ac-ceptance of responsibility”, as well as with “desire/effort to please”. Conclusions: the most preferred strategies of self-presentation among Russian teachers are avoidance as evasion of responsibility and avoidance of decisive actions and attractive behavior as behavior that causes a favorable impression of the subject of self-presentation. This should be taken into account when building work with teachers in the school system.

How to deal with negative online employer reviews: An application of image repair theory

AbstractAlthough negative employer reviews pose a threat to employers by reducing organizational attractiveness, employers can respond to reviews to avert these threats. However, we lack a clear understanding of the response strategies and factors that determine response strategies' impact. To address this issue, we introduce image repair theory (IRT) as a promising theoretical foundation in the study of employer response. Using an experimental design, we tested the effects of IRT's general image repair strategies (i.e., Denial, Evasion of Responsibility, Reducing Offensiveness, Corrective Action, and Mortification) and the mechanisms underlying these effects according to IRT. Moreover, we explored the role of review content (i.e., the type of employer image information the review entails) as a contingency factor. We found differences between Denial, Corrective Action, and Mortification, which show that the choice of response strategies can matter and that the relationship between response strategy and potential applicants' perceptions of organizational attractiveness is mediated by attributions of responsibility rather than by perceived offensiveness. In addition, our results suggest that when negative reviews contain information about instrumental rather than symbolic employer image attributes, potential applicants can attribute more responsibility to the employer. Furthermore, only the effects of Reducing Offensiveness and Mortification were dependent on the review's content. We discuss theoretical implications and practical recommendations for employers that respond to negative employer reviews.

The Importance of Secondary Gain - a Missing Story

There is a wealth of data to tell us that, when it comes to illness, not all is as it seems. Research into hidden agendas of patients [1]drives home the point that a substantial portion of patients (up to 42%) have covert motives for obtaining secondary gains associated with their patient status (e.g., financial support, help or attention from others, stimulant medication, work or study related privileges, or evasion of responsibilities. Less than 10% shared their expectations with the psychiatrist. The Accident Compensation Scheme in New Zealand, , reported a prevalence of symptom exaggeration of 20-50%. In 2017 a disorder struck in Sweden. It struck whose families had failed their last appeal for asylum. The previously unknown ’catatonia’ has many of the characteristics of a culture bound syndrome – giving voice to the voiceless/powerless. Researchers from Ireland studied the motivations of people with factitious disorder. A desire for affection was the most commonly mentioned reason for fabricating illness and as a coping mechanism for threatening life events. The analysis showed that motivation was conscious. Bianchini et al have reported on the Financial Incentive Effect. Perhaps counterintuitively one of the most important points they make is that the presence of a financial incentive is associated with worse outcomes. They found that factors othere than the injury itself control for the probabilities of return to work. How can we determine what is real? [1] Van Egmond, J., Kummeling, I., & Balkom, T. A. (2005). Secondary gain as hidden motive for getting psychiatric treatment. European Psychiatry, 20(5-6), 416-421.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

What is Left for Critique? On the Perils of Innocence in Neoliberal Times

This essay explores the implications of what we call attachments to innocence for critical scholarship and progressive politics. After tracing the appearance of innocence in various strands of contemporary thought, we turn to how it shields individuals and groups from examining the depth of our own participation in oppression and harm. This evasion of responsibility works in our perspective as a hindrance to understanding power and engaging with others ethically. The essay more concretely examines how the reductionist and authoritarian dimensions of innocence dovetail with the neoliberal uptake of ‘progressive’ politics in university and activist settings. We are interested in how academics and activists of different kinds are rewarded for cultivating their innocent-selves through discursive and material interventions that leave power relations untouched. It is not merely monetary or status rewards that perpetuate this, but the crisis produced by our implication in the very violence we reject. Working with and through the mobility of agency, power, abuse, and justice, we explore what is at stake in shedding our attachments to innocence in the hope of a different sort of encounter – one that proceeds from the recognition that innocence is not a precondition for our engagement in political life.

불만표명행위의 상호작용에 대한 한중일 대조연구 -부담도의 차이를 중심으로-

In this study, similarities and differences of linguistic strategies used by Korean, Chinese and Japanese male and female college students in situations involving different levels of imposition, one with a high degree of imposition and the other with a low degree, are analyzed and discussed quantitatively with special attention given to the interactions of complaint expressing acts.<BR> Firstly, male and female college students in Korea, China and Japan show a common tendency to use an expression of apology, explanation of reason, confirmation of situation, admission of responsibility, self-justification, presence of compensation, and soothing speech more frequently than other linguistic strategies when they are a complainant in situations with a lower degree of imposition. Further, the complainants tend to use the confirmation of situation, direct and indirect expression of complaint, active improvement request and concession speech more often than other linguistic strategies in common.<BR> Next, the complainants tend to use in common an expression of apology, explanation of reason, confirmation of situation, admission of responsibility, evasion of responsibility, self-improvement, self-justification, presence of alternative, presence of compensation, and soothing speech more frequently than other linguistic strategies in situations with a higher degree of imposition. In addition, the complainants exhibit a common trend of using confirmation of situation, direct and indirect expression of complaint, active improvement request and concession speech more often than other linguistic strategies.

“As Soon as They Hear ‘Undocumented,’ They Stop Advising”: Theorizing a (Sub)conscious Evasion of Responsibility from Institutional Agents to Undocumented Students

While nearly 100,000 undocumented students in the United States graduate from high schools every year, a precarious national policy landscape exists that limits their higher education options. In addition to the structural and policy-level barriers to higher education for undocumented students, institutional agents might also enact barriers through individual practices. This qualitative study utilizes diffusion of responsibility and critical race theory to bring forward the experiences of undocumented students and institutional agents at Great Basin University (GBU). The findings presented here include, (sub)conscious evasion of responsibility and “all students” as white traditional students. (Sub)conscious evasion of responsibility refers to when institutional agents engage in a diffusion of responsibility and rely solely on diversity-affiliated offices to serve undocumented students. This study suggests that undocumented students are left out of the “all students” narrative and argues that higher education institutional agents cannot be ready to serve all students until they are undocuready. Implications point to the urgency of training institutional agents and shifting the culture of higher education institutions to center the needs of undocumented students.

EU-Turkey Refugee Deal: Buck-Passing and Bargaining on Human Lives at Risk?

Since the early stages, the EU-Turkey Refugee Deal has generated several controversies concerning its legal and moral standing. In the first section of this paper, for important informative purposes, I will briefly discuss several points related to how the legality of the deal could be contested. In the second section, I will turn my attention to a more detailed examination of whether the deal could be considered immoral with regard to two morally condemned practices, namely: buck-passing, or evasion of responsibility, and bargaining on human lives at risk. In the final section, I will attempt to outline guiding principles for a hypothetical deal that would be more responsive to the principles underpinning the Refugee Convention than the morally condemnable principles in the actual deal based on those two grounds discussed here.

Банкротство как способ самозащиты субъекта риска

The phenomenon of insolvency (bankruptcy) is considered as a mode of existence of the subject of risk in the projection of his socio-economic behavior (fear, anxiety, loneliness) and features of personal constitution (evasion of responsibility, restriction of freedom, being in debt, deception). The article substantiates the fact that the institution of insolvency (bankruptcy) of citizens appears as a means of resolving the conflict of interests between the debtor and its creditors, as a mechanism for protecting the socio-economic rights of an insolvent risk subject and as a way to “exit” from an unstable financial crisis situation.

Image Restoration for University Leaders’ Public Health COVID-19 Response: A Case Study of Notre Dame

Do as I say, not as I do is a common phrase that applies to the case of Notre Dame’s president as he began the Fall 2020 semester chastising students for gathering in large groups off campus leading to the spread of COVID-19 while he, just a month later, gathered unmasked in the U.S. White House Rose Garden to celebrate the nomination of a Notre Dame alum to the Supreme Court. This study draws upon image restoration strategies in crisis response literature to examine Notre Dame and its president’s public response to both the two-week move to remote education in Fall 2020 following COVID-19 outbreak among its students and the unmasked attendance to an event that resulted in Notre Dame’s president testing positive for COVID-19. Overall, evasion of responsibility and corrective action typified the university’s response to students’ behaviors that led to public health risk, but mortification along with contradictory messages evading responsibility typified the individual response of the university’s president that led to public health risk. Of interest to the case is the lack of religious appeal intertwined in the image restoration strategies used in the president’s apology yet the use of religious appeal in the university’s accusations against student public health behavior. Given that Notre Dame is a religiously affiliated university and the president is clergy, the inconsistent use of religious appeal may undermine the image restoration rhetoric of the president.

Proverbs, commitment, and the evasion of responsibility

Le présent article s’intéresse aux divers degrés et formes d’engagement à l’œuvre dans les interactions proverbiales. Après avoir défini les termes « engagement » et « proverbe », la notion d’engagement formellement marqué sera examinée grâce à diverses formules qui contiennent des marqueurs de point de vue. L’approche sociolinguistique sera alors adoptée afin d’étudier le potentiel d’esquive des proverbes quant à l’engagement de l’énonciateur ou les risques de conflit. Cette théorie nous permettra d’aborder la notion de polyphonie ou de joute proverbiale, et sera contestée à travers des énoncés créant volontairement ou involontairement un conflit, entrainant ainsi l’échec du désengagement de la responsabilité du locuteur. Pour finir, la nature dite prescriptive des proverbes sera critiquée. Les différents énoncés étudiés dans la dernière partie se baseront sur le cadre théorique des fonctions du langage et permettront de démontrer que les proverbes peuvent réaliser de nombreuses fonctions autres que la fonction prescriptive ou « conative », prouvant par la même les divers degrés et types d’engagement de la part du locuteur.

Coping with the milk scandal

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine crisis communication strategies used by four leading Chinese milk companies at various crisis stages to cope with the largest food safety crisis in China. Approaching the interplay between the situational crisis communication theory (Coombs, 2007) and the image restoration theory (Benoit, 1995), the study attempted to understand the importance of crisis management at various crisis stages by comparing crisis communication strategies used by surviving and thriving companies with those by the company that failed.Design/methodology/approachDividing a crisis management process into three stages, a content analysis was conducted to analyze five major crisis communication strategies – evasion of responsibility, rebuilding, bolstering, endorsement of outside experts and government relations – used by Chinese milk companies at various crisis stages.FindingsThe study demonstrated that Sanlu, which went bankrupt as a result of the scandal, predominately took the Chinese crisis management approach. The other three companies that survived the scandal employed western crisis communication strategies, although with distinct Chinese characteristics. Specifically, all four companies employed similar strategies during the pre-crisis stage – keeping silent/covering-up. During the crisis stage, strategies varied dramatically as companies became involved – looking for government protection and apologizing, while survivors tended to adopt a widely used western strategy – bolstering at the post-crisis stage.Practical implicationsThe examination of crisis communication strategies at various crisis stages may shed some light on how effectively Chinese companies and possibly international companies in China can manage future crises that share similar profiles as this milk scandal and further call for attention to scrutinize the social responsibility of corporate citizens in China.Originality/valueThis study would fill the vacancy in research by investigating crisis communication strategies used in the largest food safety crisis in China. The findings provide insight for understanding the current status of crisis communication strategies and management within a Chinese matrix of political, social and cultural factors.

A qualitative meta-analysis of apologia, image repair, and crisis communication: Implications for theory and practice

This qualitative meta-analysis examines thirty years of the apologia, image repair and crisis communication literature. We analyzed 110 articles across 51 peer-reviewed journals from 1986 to 2016 to determine any themes or patterns in the strategies used by organizations and/or individuals facing crises or threatened reputations. Our analysis found that corrective action is the most successful and third most common strategy, particularly when paired with another strategy, such as reducing the offensiveness or bolstering. Denial, in contrast, is the least successful strategy, particularly when paired with evasion of responsibility, or reducing the offensiveness. Yet denial was the most frequently used strategy. Our analysis also uncovered mitigating factors that help shape success or failure, including one’s guilt or innocence, remaining silent, potential legal action, the scope of the crisis, and promptness in responding. Theoretical implications include a broader understanding of strategies people choose as well as intersecting contexts and factors that determine success or failure. Practical implications center on helping practitioners better utilize image repair strategies.

Confession Governance and Verdicts in China’s Criminal Justice

The objective phenomenon of reliance on confessions is the source of many problems in the practice of criminal justice in China. Although successive amendments to the law have endeavored to improve the handling of confessions, they have been unable to resolve the dilemma of a rigid management mode, incompatible management strategies, and conflicting attitudes towards management. This paper has made a multi-dimensional reinterpretation of it from the judges’ perspective, including functional analysis, cultural interpretation and immediate considerations. It reveals that behind its functions of offering moral comfort or allowing evasion of responsibility, confession, as a medium of physical and intellectual management, has the more important function of supplementing and improving the legitimacy of criminal verdicts. The remolding of the legitimacy of criminal verdicts with the coordinated improvement of the management of confessions will change the mode of association between those who currently govern confession and those they govern and will clash with the current closed mode of criminal justice management, thereby promoting a transformation in the governance of criminal justice.

Book Review: Repairing the Athlete’s Image: Studies in Sports Image Restoration, edited by Joseph R. Blaney, Lance R. Lippert, and Scott J. Smith

Repairing the Athlete's Image: Studies in Sports Image Restoration. Joseph R. Blaney, Lance R. Lippert, and Scott J. Smith, eds. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013. 415 pp. $85 hbk.Repairing the Athlete's Image will intrigue the multiple groups interested in the relationship between the media and the sports industry. Whether you are an educator, journalist, public relations practitioner, or in a position of responsibility within a sports organization, this text has something for you.Edited by Joe Blaney, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of communication at Illinois State University, Lance Lippert, associate professor of communication at ISU, and J. Scott Smith, a PhD student at the University of Missouri, Repairing the Athlete's Image identifies examples where athletes, coaches, or organizations disgraced themselves and then sought to restore their image through words and actions. More than one-dozen case studies (almost all involving Americans) dominate the text.Most of the authors who wrote the case studies employed Benoit's image restoration theory as they reviewed attempts at image rehabilitation. Summarizing briefly, Benoit suggests individuals needing to restore a public image have a variety of strategies available. They include denial, evasion of responsibility, reducing the offensiveness of the act(s), planned corrective actions, and mortification. This book reinforces that none of these strategies is guaranteed effective in every situation and that more than one needs to be used when reputations are damaged.My principal criticism of the book is that too many essays are thin, and therefore lack some combination of literature reviews, methodologies, identifiable research questions or hypotheses, or firm conclusions. This concern especially is evident in some of the initial chapters, which examine how selected athletes sought to salvage their professional identities after being linked to drug use or marital infidelity. For example, incorporating the first three chapters (all involving baseball players linked to steroids) into a single essay and including the missing items identified at the beginning of this paragraph would have made for a stronger presentation. At minimum, the strategies employed by the athletes and their effectiveness could have been compared, thus improving on the three standalone essays.I found the essay titled Celebrating Spectator Sports in America: The Centrality of Press Conferences and Media Interviews to Sports Image Repair to be the most important. Written by Peter Smudde and Jeffrey Courtright, the chapter explores how press conferences and one-on-one media interviews must be employed by anyone attempting to re-establish a positive identity or brand. …