Full of Excuses? Deflecting
Blame Not Always Wise
Excerpt By Amy Norton, Reuter's Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Excuses for bad behavior may abound in our but-it's-not-my-fault culture, but researchers say that shifting blame from one's self can often backfire.

Psychologists at the University of Florida found that under certain circumstances, excuses gain nothing more than ill feelings from others. Their study of college students showed that people who routinely avoid responsibility for mistakes and misdeeds risk being viewed as lacking character and being deceitful and self-absorbed.

And blaming others, giving a suspect excuse or using excuses that completely ignore one's own weaknesses may win a similar fate, according to the study findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

It may seem logical that people would often have no patience for excuses, but excuses do serve a purpose. Indeed, the psychological-research field has frequently focused on the upside of excuse-making, according to the authors of the new study.

Deflecting blame helps "buffer the self from failures," explained lead author Beth A. Pontari, who is currently at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Blaming one's self for every mistake can take a toll, and it's a particular problem among people with depression. Making excuses, or "externalizing" blame for things that go wrong, can save people from feeling inappropriately bad about themselves.

"I don't think that, inherently, excuses are bad," Pontari told Reuters Health.

Instead, she and her colleagues identified instances when excuses become "problematic." Their study presented college students with descriptions of several scenarios in which the central character made excuses for his or her behavior. The researchers found that under certain conditions--such as when the character had a history of making excuses, or when an excuse like "I was stuck in traffic jam" could not be corroborated--participants did not look kindly on the excuse-maker.

Similarly dim views were cast on excuses that "perpetuated a weakness"--for example, when a worker blames a "quirky" computer for his or her on-the-job shortcomings. In contrast, the researchers report, "central characters fared better when they balanced their excuse"--by, for example, simply taking some responsibility.

So, according to Pontari, instead of merely blaming traffic for your late arrival at that meeting that cost your company that important client, try acknowledging that you should have left earlier.

"It's the balancing act that we have to do as human beings," she said.

SOURCE: Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 2002;21:497-516.

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