WHEN HEARINGS NOT BELIEVING - PERCEIVED DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE EXPLANATIONS FOR 2 COMPLIANCE FAILURES

This article compares respondents' beliefs about others' private and p ublic explanations for failure to fulfill true compliance-gaining goal s: providing assistance and accepting advice. Participants generated o pen-ended responses that were either acceptable accounts (public expla nations) or probable causes (private attributions) for another's nonco mpliance. Data analysis showed that attributions and accounts tend to vary in form, and, as expected, public explanations perceived as likel y to be communicated were more unintentional, uncontrollable, unstable , and external than were private explanations for both failure types. People's reports for both attributions and accounts, however, were inf luenced by the nature of the compliance goal, with means for scenarios depicting failures to take advice consistently more intentional and c ontrollable than the responses for failing to provide assistance.