Explaining our sins: Factors influencing offender accounts and anticipated victim responses.

Two studies examined the effects of offender blameworthiness, consequence severity, and offender gender on written accounts provided after a hypothetical predicament. Participants imagined themselves as the offending party in a predicament and provided written accounts after their victims' reproach. Accounts were coded using Schonbach's (1980) account taxonomy. Study 1 results showed that although concessionary strategies were the most prevalent overall, they were more prevalent for more blameworthy offenses than less blameworthy offenses. In Study 2, in which 3 levels of blameworthiness were used, offenders proffered significantly more concessions after negliglent acts than after either accidental or intentional acts, producing a curvilinear pattern. Again, accounts of men and women differed, with men proffering fewer and less complex concessions and more lies than did women