Apology Across Contexts: Relational Mobility and Family Relationship Repair

Apologies form an integral mechanism to reestablish equality within the familial context; however, the way and degree of apologies vary significantly in diverse cultural and social milieus. Relational mobility - the range of latitude available to humans to initiate or discontinue interpersonal conjunctions of diverse variousness - are to set up importance on conciliatory approaches. In low mobility settings, characterised by collectivist societies, strength of kin ties are high and replaced whereas replacement of those relationships are resisted; therefore, in order to maintain harmony, the imperative for full verbal contrition engages individuals towards personal accountability and affectional linkage. On the other hand, environments of high mobility create room for fluid relational dynamics and thus underwrite the demand for investing heavily in reparative efforts. Within such communicative contexts, people may prefer pragmatic forms of compensation, i.e., the scheduling over or the provision of small tokens, as long as they are seen as adequate substitutes for emotional apology. These patterns of behavior can be characterized as quintessential adaptive behaviors mediated by the interaction between the durability of the relationship and culturally sanctioned norms. Elucidation of the role of relational mobility in shaping apologetic behavior to increase cross-cultural communicative competence and increase efficacy of family conflict resolution protocols.