Cultural Differences in the Function and Meaning of Apologies

One of the most effective means for re-establishing trust in negotiations and disputes is by making an apology. However, the function and meaning of an apology (and thus its effectiveness for negotiators) may differ across cultures. We hypothesized that people from an individual-agency culture (such as the United States) understand apologies as analytic mechanisms for assigning blame and re-establishing *) William Maddux is an Associate Professor in Organizational Behavior at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. His research focuses on culture and negotiations. **) Peter Kim is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. His research concerns the dynamics of interpersonal perceptions and their implications for work groups, negotiations, and dispute resolution. ***) Tetsushi Okumura is Professor of Management and Negotiation, Faculty of Economics, Graduate School of Nagoya City University. His current research includes cross-cultural negotiation, in-house dispute resolution system design, competency development in land-purchasing negotiations for public projects, managerial behavior and leadership, and environment negotiations. ****) Jeanne M. Brett is the DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. She is the author of Negotiating Globally (Jossey Bass 2007) and devotes most of her research time to studying issues of culture and negotiation. 406 W.W. Maddux et al. / International Negotiation 16 (2011) 405–425 personal credibility. In contrast, apologies in collective-agency cultures (such as Japan) are understood to be general expressions of remorse rather than a means to assign culpability. A survey of Japanese and Americans found that, compared to Americans, Japanese apologized more often and were more likely to apologize for actions in which they were not involved; on the other hand, Americans were more likely than Japanese to equate apologizing with personal blame. A subsequent experimental study showed that these cultural differences in the function and meaning of apologies have implications for trust repair in disputes: apologies for integrity violations led to greater trust repair for Japanese than for Americans, but apologies for competence violations were somewhat more effective for Americans than Japanese. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.