The effects of self-construals and embarrassability on predicament response strategies

The purpose of this study was to discover the relationship between self-construals, embarrassability, and predicament response strategies such as apologies, excuses, justifications, and denials. It was predicted that independent self-construals would be negatively correlated with embarrassability, which, in turn, would lead to the higher likelihood of using more assertive predicament responses such as justifications or denials. On the other hand, it was proposed that interdependent self-construals would be positively correlated with embarrassability, which, in turn, would lead to the higher likelihood of using more mitigating predicament responses such as apologies and excuses. One hundred and eighty students at the University of Hawaìi participated in this study which consisted of reading two hypothetical situations involving self-induced social predicaments and then rating the likelihood of using the corresponding predicament response statements. The participants were also given Leung and Kim's [1997. A modified version of self-construal scale. Manoa: University of Hawaìi] revised self-construal scale and Modigliani's [1968. Embarrassment and embarrassability. Sociometry, 31, 313-326] embarrassability scale. As expected, interdependent self-construals were positively correlated with embarrassability, which in turn, led to the greater likelihood of use of apologies and excuses; however, the expectation for independent self-construals to be negatively correlated to embarrassability was not borne out by the data. Additionally, the relationship between self-construals and embarrassability was not significantly linked to justification or denial. Discussion of these results and suggestions for future research is provided.