The relationship between severity of consequences, locus of control, and account giving

Researchers have typically described four types of accounts (or reasons) people give for their adverse behavior: apologies, denials, excuses, and justifications. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between different types of accounts, consequence severity of the situation, and locus of control. A three-way interaction was predicted: in high consequence situations, participants would rate apologies, excuses and denial statements higher than justifications, but in low consequence situations, persons with an internal locus of control (internals) would rate apologies and justifications higher, whereas persons with an external locus of control (externals) would prefer denials and excuses, consistent with their locus of control characteristics. The second hypothesis predicted a two-way interaction between consequences and account, where in high consequence situations participants were expected to prefer apologies, denial, and excuses; in low consequence situations they would prefer justifications. An online survey was conducted with 110 graduate students and professionals. Participants were randomly assigned in a counterbalanced mixed-methods approach where they received a combination of low and high consequence scenarios and were asked to rate agreement with different account statements. Participants completed Rotter's (1966) locus of control scale and answered demographic questions. To assess its validity, the instrument was first pilot tested with a convenience sample of 23 participants. A separately recruited, final study sample of 110 different participants was used for the hypothesis testing Final study results supported a three-way interaction: for persons with external locus of control, apologies were rated significantly higher in high consequence situations when compared with low, and denials were rated significantly higher in low consequence situations when compared with high. For internals, there was no significant difference in account ratings between low and high consequences. Their pattern of ratings was similar to the overall ratings of accounts where apologies were rated significantly higher than any other account type; denials were rated significantly higher than excuses or justifications; and excuses and justifications were not significantly different from one another.