Thank you for taking the time to participate in our study! Remember that all information is anonymous, and will not be able to be traced back to you.

The purpose of this study is to identify the most effective way for a person to redeem themselves after making a bad impression by behaving immorally. All the scenarios you read in this study contained a moral transgression (i.e., immoral behaviour), and until recently, a bad first impression caused by this sort of transgression was thought to be incredibly difficult to improve. This is because information relating to morality is more central and important to us when we form impressions, compared to information relating to ability or warmth (Wojciszke, Bazinska & Jaworski, 1998; Goodwin, Piazza & Rozin, 2014). The reason for this is an action concerning inability only has inward consequences for the person who performed it, whereas immoral behaviour could potentially threaten another person's well-being (Wojciszke, 2005).

In a previous experiment, we found that performing a good act was a more effective method of improving bad impressions than apologising. This was a surprising and unexpected find. One theory as to why we may have found this is based around the fact that the good acts in this previous experiment were unrelated to the original moral transgression. This means that they will draw a person's attention away from the fact that someone behaved immorally, and direct it towards the fact that they have been acting virtuously. Contrary to this, an apology may act as a signal of guilt and a lack of integrity, because it draws attention to the fact that someone behaved immorally (Kim et al., 2004), and we would only expect an immoral person to behave in an immoral manner (Reeder & Coovert, 1986).

To try and help determine why we found these unexpected results, we are now looking at the effectiveness of apologies and both good acts related and unrelated to the original transgression at improving impressions. If the theory mentioned above is correct, we would expect that a good act that is unrelated to the moral transgression will improve impressions significantly more than an apology, or a good act that is related to the transgression. This is because both the apology and the related good act will draw attention to the immoral behaviour.

If you are particularly interested in this, there is further reading below.

For more information on impression formation, read 'Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation.': Goodwin, G. P., Piazza, J., & Rozin, P. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 106(1), 148.

For more information on apology acting as a signal of a lack of integrity, read 'Removing the shadow of suspicion': Kim, P. H., Ferrin, D. L., Cooper, C. D., & Dirks, K. T. (2004). Removing the shadow of suspicion: the effects of apology versus denial for repairing competence- versus integrity-based trust violations. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(1), 104‑118.

For those of you who don't have access to Scientific Journals, have a look at moralfoundations.org for more information on moral psychology.

If you have any further questions, feel free to email Natasha Doré (student): r01nd18@abdn.ac.uk or Dr Devin Ray (supervisor): d.ray@abdn.ac.uk.