Face goals in apology: A cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and U.S. Americans

This study investigated how the offender’s responsibility, offense severity, offender’s prior relationship with the offended person, and culture influence the offender’s concerns for self- and other-positive and negative face when apologizing to the offended person. The study hypothesized that responsibility, severity, and relationship have positive relationships with other-positive, other-negative, and self-positive face concerns but a negative relationship with self-negative face concern. Culture was expected to moderate the effect of relationship on the four face concerns. Results supported the main effects of responsibility and relationship on other-positive, other-negative, and self-positive face concerns, but these effects were moderated by culture such that the expected positive relationships were supported only among U.S. Americans but not among Chinese. U.S. Americans varied their face concerns when apologizing based on situational and relational cues whereas Chinese did not make such distinctions; Chinese maintained relatively high levels of face concerns across the different levels of responsibility and relationship type.