When and why parents prompt their children to apologize: the roles of transgression type and parenting style

Young children are sensitive to the importance of apologies, yet little is known about when and why parents prompt apologies from children. We examined these issues with parents of 3-to-10 year-old children (N=483). Parents judged it to be important for children to apologize following both intentional and accidental morally-relevant transgressions, and they anticipated prompting apologies in both contexts, showing an outcome bias' (i.e., a concern for the outcomes of children's transgressions rather than for their underlying intentions). Parents viewed apologies as less important after children's breaches of social convention; parents recognized differences between social domains in their responses to children's transgressions. Irrespective of parenting style, parents were influenced in similar fashion by particular combinations of transgressions and victims, though permissive parents were least likely to anticipate prompting apologies. Parents endorsed different reasons for prompting apologies as a function of transgression type, suggesting that they attend to key features of their children's transgressions when deciding when to prompt apologies.