Excuse

Definition

An excuse involves circumstances in which people perceive that they have made mistakes and, in response to these uncomfortable situations, will say or do things to (a) make the mistakes seem not so bad, and/or (b) lessen their linkages to the mistakes. People are motivated to make excuses to preserve their images of being good and in control, and these preserved images are for both the surrounding people who may have witnessed the mistakes, as well as the actual people who made the errors. If the excuse is effective, the givers' positive images are preserved and they can continue to perform well and interact with people just as they did before the slip-ups happened.

History

There probably have been excuses for as long as there have been people making mistakes. Nevertheless, a common view among lay people is that excuses are transparent and useless ploys. Also, the individual believes that other people use excuses but that he or she does not. Contrary to these negative views among the public at large, however, researchers have found that excuses are serious and generally effective coping mechanisms when used in moderation.

Alfred Adler first discussed the role of excuses in safeguard mechanisms, which are coping strategies for maintaining the positive self-images of people. Scholarly interest in excuses was kindled in the 1970s and 1980s when social psychologists began to explore the attributions that people make for why things happened to them. During this same time period, work on excuses increased when researchers' attentions shifted to what was called impression management, or the attempts that people make to maintain their favorable self-images—both for the external audiences of other people and the internal audience of oneself.

Evidence

As psychologists began to study excuses, they observed what people said and did after they had made mistakes or failed in important activities. There were two common responses that people produced. First, people would say things to lessen the seeming badness of their mistakes. For example, a man who is trying to lose weight breaks his diet by having a piece of cake. He then goes into excuse-making mode as he tries to diminish the badness of this misdeed by saying, “It was only a small piece of cake.” Second, people attempt to lessen their linkages to their mistakes. For example, consider a young girl who picks up her friend's doll and takes it home. Later, when caught in this theft, she says, “Patty (the playmate who owns the doll) said I could have it (this not being true).”

After observing such real-life examples of excusing, researchers set up experimental situations in which the participants would fail at ego-involving tasks. One experimental approach was to give students a classroom-like learning experience and afterward deliver feedback to one set of students that they had done very poorly (the failure condition). In comparison to another groups of students, who were told that they had done very well, these failure-feedback students were more likely to state that the task was very difficult. Such excuse making made it seem as if their bad performances really were not so bad after all because most other students also did poorly (thereby maintaining a positive image); moreover, if the task truly was so difficult, the inherent logic was that the task caused the poor performance rather than it being the responsibility of the student (thereby lessening that student's linkage to the poor performance). This “everyone would do poorly on that task” represented a “double play” type of excuse in that it preserved the positive image and lessened the student's responsibility for the failure.

...