Excuse Validation

Rules help us accomplish things by coordinating behavior and expectations. Rule-breakers are often blamed, but sometimes they are excused. My lab discovered something new and surprising about how people think about rule-breaking. Judging that someone blamelessly broke a rule can lead people to claim, paradoxically, that no rule was broken at all. Why does this happen? Judging that someone “broke the rules” can suggest that he deserves blame. But what if it was an innocent mistake? In that case, many people judge that no rule was broken in the first place, as a way of excusing his behavior. They sacrifice accuracy for fairness in reporting. We call this “excuse validation.”