Repairing regretted messages: Effects of emotional state, relationship type, and seriousness of offense

Persons sometimes say things that they later regret. Such messages are often followed by efforts to repair damage to the relationship. This research asked whether the use of eight repair strategies following a regretted message is predicted by (a) the seriousness of the offense, (b) qualities of the speaker's relationship with the hearer, and/or (c) the speaker's emotional state after becoming aware that the message was a mistake. Logistic regression analyses indicated that the strongest predictors of repair strategies were emotions experienced by the speaker upon realizing the message should not have been said.