Costly group apology communicates a group’s sincere “intention”

ABSTRACT

Groups, such as governments and organizations, apologize for their misconduct. In the interpersonal context, the forgiveness-fostering effect of apologies is pronounced when apologizing entails some cost (e.g., compensating damage, canceling a favorite activity to prioritize the apology) because costly apologies tend to be perceived as more sincere than non-costly apologies (e.g., merely saying “sorry”). Since groups lack a mental state (e.g., sincere intention), this could arguably render a group apology ineffective. This research investigated the possibility that people ascribe intention to group agents and that offering a costly group apology is an effective means of fostering perceived sincerity. A vignette study (Pilot Study) showed that costly group apologies tend to be perceived as more sincere than non-costly group apologies. A subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed that costly group apologies engaged the bilateral temporoparietal junction and precuneus more so than non-costly group apologies and no apology did. The bilateral temporoparietal junction and precuneus have been implicated in the reasoning of social/communicative intention. Therefore, these results suggest that although a group mind does not exist, people ascribe a mental state (i.e., sincere intention) to a group especially when the group issues a costly apology after committing some transgression.

KEYWORDS:

• Costly apology
• group apology
• crisis communication
• mental state inference

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Haruo Isoda, Akira Ishizuka, and Tamotsu Kawai (Brain and Mind Research Center, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan) for their technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [15H03447].