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To Forgive, or Not to Forgive: How the Sincerity of Apologies Online Affect Forgiveness

Jane Doe

Florida International University

Methods

Participants

The following study consisted of 141 randomly assigned participants. Of these participants, 44.7% ( n = 63) were male and 55.3% ( n = 78) were female. Participant age ranged from 17 to 50 years old with the average participant age being M = 24.60 ( SD = 7.92). This sample included 50.4% Hispanic American ( n = 71), 28.4% Caucasian ( n = 40), 10.6% African American ( n = 15), 4.3% Asian American ( n = 6), 1.4% Native Indian ( n = 2), and 5% participants that classified themselves as “Other” ( n = 7). See Table 1.

Table 1

Demographics for Study One .

Materials and Procedure

Before distributing the questionnaires, 141 participants were contacted and asked for informed verbal consent to participate in the research study and advised that there were no risks in participating. If the participant granted oral consent to participate, they were subsequently given one of three documents that contained a screenshot of a Twitter page and four-part questionnaire. Part one of the document included a Twitter page for a user named Charlie Webb. The profile of Charlie’s Twitter page was identical in all documents, including a generic header, profile picture, and “bio” (biography), as well as usual items such as the search bar, trending hashtags, and “follow” recommendations. Most importantly, it consisted of an initial three “tweets” (posts) in which the user Charlie Webb described an incident that occurred at the mall during the COVID-19 pandemic. They said they were not wearing a face mask and defied the norm of social distancing by invading an employee’s space, leading to an argument with the mall employee. However, the following two tweets after the description of the transgression differed between conditions. In the “Sincere” condition, Charlie apologizes for their actions, acknowledges being wrong, accepts responsibility, and accepts their punishment. They follow this statement with the hashtag “#SorrySorrySorry”. In the “Insincere” condition, Charlie apologized similarly to the sincere condition, but ends the tweet with “Ha! #SorryNotSorry”. Lastly, the third condition which is “No” apology states simply suggests leaving the incident in the past and ends with the hashtag “#WhatsDoneIsDone”.

In part two of the study, participants were asked to rate their impression of Charlie on the basis of what they read from the Twitter page provided to them in part one, without looking back to it. The ratings were measured on an interval Likert scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree) on statements such as Charlie acknowledging wrongfulness, accepting responsibility, expressing remorse, offering compensation, assuring not to behave in that manner again, whether the apology seemed forced, if the apology seemed sincere, and whether the participant themselves would accept the apology. In part three of the study, participants were offered to rate more statements on the same Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) as part two judging Charlie’s behavior, such as if it was wrong, understandable, and forgivable, as well as their perceptions of Charlie as being regretful, selfish, moral, and rude. Lastly, participants rated how much they agree with the statement: “I don’t think people should be forced to wear a mask at stores if they don’t want to wear it”. For this study, only two dependent variables were analyzed from the sixteen ratings measured.

In part four of the study, participants were asked to fill out demographic questions, but were advised that it was not necessary to answer if uncomfortable with doing so. The demographic questions included the participants’ providing their gender, age, race/ethnicity, whether English is their first language, and if not, to write in their first language, whether they are a student at Florida International University, and their relationship status. In closing, part five concluded the document with a nominal measurement for attention in which the participants were asked to recall whether the hashtag they saw in the Twitter page previously shown was: “#SorrySorrySorry”, “#SorryNotSorry”, or “#WhatsDoneIsDone”.

After participants completed the questionnaire, they were debriefed regarding the purpose of the study being perception of sincerity within apologies, the manipulation of apologies in all conditions, and the predictions for the study. Analyses were conducted on the attention check of the hashtags and whether participants perceived Charlie’s apology as sincere and if they showed acceptance of responsibility (ratings from part two).

Results Study One

First, a chi square test of independence was conducted using apology condition as our independent variable (sincere, insincere, or no apology). The dependent variable is recall of the hashtag at the end of Charlie’s thread of tweets, in order to determine if participants recalled the condition they were exposed to. The chi square was significant, X2(4) = 121.93, p < .001. Most “Sincere” condition participants recalled #SorrySorrySorry (87.2%); most “Insincere” condition recalled participants #SorryNotSorry (74.5%); and most “No apology” condition participants recalled #WhatsDoneIsDone (68.1%). Cramer’s v was strong. These results serve to confirm that our participants viewed the manipulation as intended. See Table 2.

Table 2

Crosstabs and Chi Square – Study One

Using apology condition (sincere, insincere, or no apology) as the independent variable and participants’ agreement with “Charlie’s apology showed an acceptance of responsibility” as the dependent variable, a one-way ANOVA revealed differences among participants. A significant relationship emerged, F(2, 138) = 8.82, p < .001. A Tukey post hoc test revealed that participants in the sincere condition ( M = 4.79, SD = 0.69) agreed more with the statement than both the participants in the insincere ( M = 4.17, SD = 0.73) and no apology ( M = 4.36, SD = 0.76) condition. However, the insincere and no apology conditions did not differ in agreement with the responsibility statement. See Table 3.

Table 3

Responsibility ANOVA

A second One-Way ANOVA analysis was conducted with apology condition as the independent variable (sincere, insincere, or no apology) and rate of agreement with the statement “Charlie’s apology seemed sincere” as the dependent variable. A significant relationship emerged, F(2, 138) = 11.90, p < .001. A Tukey post hoc test revealed that participants in the sincere condition ( M = 4.34, SD = 0.87) agreed with sincerity statement more than both the insincere ( M = 3.38, SD = 1.13) and no apology condition ( M = 3.87, SD = 0.82), with the no apology condition agreeing with the statement more than the insincere condition. See Table 4.

Table 4

Sincerity ANOVA

Discussion Study One

We predicted that the participants would be aware of the apology manipulation in all three conditions, which was supported by the results in the chi square test of independence. We also predicted that participants in the sincere apology condition would view the apology, and the apologizer, more favorably in terms of agreeing with statements that Charlie accepted responsibility and was sincere, than participants in both the insincere and no apology conditions. However, participants in the insincere condition would view the apology less favorably than those in the no apology condition. The sincerity ANOVA analysis supported the hypothesis, with sincere participants agreeing with Charlie’s apology seeming sincere, more so than the participants in the insincere and no apology condition. On the other hand, while the responsibility ANOVA analysis showed that participants in the sincere condition agreed with the statement that Charlie’s apology accepted responsibility more than participants in both the insincere and no apology conditions, the insincere and no apology conditions viewed the apology equally. While the results showed statistically significant differences, the average rating in the sincere condition leaned more towards agreeing rather than strongly agreeing. Based on the literature, these findings were expected considering how the dependent variables shown, acceptance of responsibility and sincerity, influence the perception of an apology as well as the chances of being forgiven. Perhaps in the responsibility variable, the lack of an apology seemed just as unsympathetic as an insincere attempt of an apology, leading to the results found.