Excuses and character: Identifying the problematic aspects of excuses

Excuses have the paradoxical quality of being widely condemned but widely employed. The psychology literature has articulated and provided evidence for the benefits of excuses, but the downside of excuses has been relatively neglected. We considered the disadvantages of excuses from the standpoint of their influence on character. Specifically, excuses are problematic when they raise questions about the actor's sincerity, cause the actor to disengage from valued goals, or suggest the actor is self-absorbed to the point of disregarding others and rules of conduct. Participants read six different scenarios that depicted these problematic excuse situations, and evaluated the main character and his/her explanation for a problem at work or at school. In all of the scenarios, participants confirmed that certain aspects of excuses cause excuse makers to be viewed as having less character, and as being more unreliable, deceptive, ineffectual, and narcissistic.