Victims as "Narrative Critics": Factors Influencing Rejoinders and Evaluative Responses to Offenders' Accounts

Abstract

This study examined the effects of offender blameworthiness and offender accounts on victims' rejoinders. Participants imagined themselves victims of another's offense, provided written rejoinders to offenders' accounts, and rated the interpersonal consequences of the predicament. Offenders' blameworthiness and the accounts they proffered independently influenced both what victims chose to say and how they chose to say it; in response to escalating blameworthiness and increasingly contentious accounts, victims' rejoinders grew more negative in substance and communicative style. Victims' subjective assessments of the inter-personal consequences of predicaments were jointly influenced by offenders' blameworthiness and their accounts; account mitigated negative assessments following accidental and negligent offenses but not following intentional offenses. Results provide a tentative framework for understanding interpersonal conflict resulting from the face threat inherent both in offenders' trans-gressions and in their explanations for them.