The sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy has overwhelmed public media and has resulted in a barrage of criminal and civil lawsuits. Between October of 1985 and November of 2002, more than three-hundred and ninety-four media sources reported on allegations of sexual misconduct worldwide. The response by the hierarchy of the church has been defensive with little effort in expressing remorse. Researchers over the past decade have focused much attention on how organizations respond to crises involving allegations of wrongdoing, but little attention to the church as an organization remains under-researched. When an organization suffers such a crisis as did the Catholic Church regarding the sexual abuse of its members, the role of apology takes on various viewpoints. The questions posed for this research are: First, what strategies of apology did the Catholic Church use in addressing the sexual abuse by clergy and were the apologies issued apologies of regret or remorse. Secondly, I want to explore the impact the media has had on the church. Finally I want to explore the status of the church today with regard to legal issues and the effect the statute of limitations is having on the victims being compensated. The apologies issued on behalf of the Church were few and far between. Based on the analysis of articles from the Boston Globe, it appears that the Church apologized as more of regret than remorse. The silence and cover-up by leaders in the Church forced the hand of many victims to speak out about the abuse and confront the Church in the only way they would respond . . . in a court of law. Once the accusations became public, the media played a pivotal role in escalating the crisis, thereby, forcing the hand of the Church in addressing the abuse. Taking responsibility for the actions of clergy from the very beginning would have been the responsible thing for the Church to do.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2007. / "August, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-130). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

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abstract: An offender's expression of remorse plays an important role following relational transgressions, yet it is not well understood how the experience and expression of remorse relate to both victim responses to hurt and forgiveness in close relationships. This study uses a social functionalist framework to investigate the role of remorse in the forgiveness process and tests whether offender remorse experiences mediate the associations between victim responses to hurt and remorse expressions. Undergraduate participants (N=671) completed questionnaires about a time when they hurt a close relational partner and reported their partners' responses to hurt, their own experiences and expressions of remorse, and their perceptions of forgiveness. Results indicated that victims' sad communication positively predicted offenders' other-oriented and affiliation remorse experiences; victims' threatening communication positively predicted offenders' self-focused remorse experience; and victims' conciliatory communication and withdrawal positively predicted offenders' affiliation and self-focused remorse experiences. Results of the mediation analyses revealed that self-focused remorse fully mediated the relationship between victim threatening communication and low status behaviors; other-oriented remorse partially mediated the association between victim sad communication and apology/concern behaviors; and affiliation partially mediated the relationship between victim conciliatory communication and connection behaviors. Victims' withdrawal behaviors and offenders' use of compensation were not related. Finally, offenders' apology/concern and connection behaviors associated positively with perceptions of forgiveness, whereas low status behaviors negatively predicted forgiveness. Use of compensation following a hurtful event was not significantly related to forgiveness. Results are interpreted within the framework of evolutionary psychology and further validate the functional approach to studying emotion. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication 2011

abstract: Previous research on experiences of the endowment effect and buyer's remorse has often failed to compare the two seemingly related phenomena. The current study attempts to provide a framework in which the two can be compared and to offer a possible suggestion as to when it may be beneficial to experience either the endowment effect or buyer's remorse, namely situations of resource scarcity versus abundance. The current study employed an online dating paradigm in which resource scarcity was operationalized as the sex ratio of users on the site. Two hundred and one participants were exposed to a favorable sex ratio, an unfavorable sex ratio, or a no information control condition and asked to bid on potential dates. Once matched with a potential date, participants were asked how willing they would be to give up their date and the minimum amount of points they would request to do so. These dependent variables served as indicators of experiences of the endowment effect or buyer's remorse. Results indicated that the sex ratio of the online dating site did not influence experiences of the endowment effect versus buyer's remorse. Potential mediators and moderators were also investigated although no significant effects were found. Possible reasons for the null results are discussed as well as future directions. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2014

Remorse can be a powerful source of mitigation at sentencing. However, there is a lack of formal justification for this practice and a paucity of theoretical literature engaging with this issue. Addressing this gap, this thesis offers a comprehensive justification for why an offender’s remorse should mitigate the punishment he receives. It begins by discussing the emotion of remorse – its nature and value. With reference to broadly-retributive theories of punishment, it then considers various arguments that could be offered to justify the mitigating effect of remorse on the offender’s sentence. It rejects two arguments: either remorse constitutes some of the offender’s deserved punishment or remorse reduces the seriousness of the offence. Instead, it develops a justification inspired by philosophical work distinguishing blameworthiness and blaming. The thesis argues that, in the context of sentencing, a broadly-conceived dialogical model of censure is the most legitimate. Remorse, as the offender’s ideal input into the dialogue about the offence, modifies the subsequent censure required. If censure seeks a response, and this response is already forthcoming, to nonetheless continue to seek this response as if it were absent devalues the censure. Von Hirsch and Ashworth’s assertions that censure appeals to the offender as a rational moral agent, and their adherence to certain quasiretributive values, are shown to provide further support for these arguments. If the deserved censure is mitigated, then so is the corresponding punishment communicating this censure. The thesis next explores how this justification for mitigation compares with ‘mercy’ justifications, arguing that the justification offered in this thesis operates more internally to deserved censure, and is more principled, so is preferable on these grounds. In conclusion, the thesis considers the implications of its arguments for sentencing practice and whether it is a concern that they are valid only within ‘censure’ theories of punishment.

Remorse is an emotion that has historically been afforded some significance in Western culture. It continues to play a part in legal processes and is of interest for the rehabilitation of offenders. Remorse has been afforded little scholarly attention by psychologists, although some attention has been given to remorse in the study of emotion and in the study of the effect of remorse on social judgement. In this thesis, the psychology of remorse is reviewed in four areas: interpersonal judgment, judicial processes, psychotherapy, and the study of emotion. The study of remorse as an emotion and the effect of remorse on interpersonal judgment are investigated in three separate empirical studies and one meta-analysis. / thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2001.

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Self-forgiveness is a growing sub-field of the broader study of forgiveness, and initial research has linked self-forgiveness to positive mental and physical health outcomes. However, the extant literature on self-forgiveness is in its infancy, and there is a need for further research to understand the predictors of self-forgiveness and the clinical implications that might follow. The current study aimed to build on the extant literature by exploring two sets of predictors of self-forgiveness: (1) the four Rs as proposed in Cornish and Wade's four-R therapeutic model of self-forgiveness (i.e., responsibility, remorse, restoration, and renewal) and (2) personality as measured by the Big Five. This study also explored how responsibility for the offense and humility might moderate the relationship between self-forgiveness and well-being. Participants were undergraduates recruited from a large, public university in the southwestern United States. They were instructed to describe a recent interpersonal offense they had committed and complete a questionnaire. The overall results suggest that there is a negative cross-sectional relationship between responsibility, remorse, and restoration with self-forgiveness and that, when taken together, the four-Rs account for a significant amount of variance in self-forgiveness. Neuroticism was negatively associated with self-forgiveness while conscientiousness and extraversion were positively associated with self-forgiveness. The Big Five collectively accounted for a significant amount of variance in self-forgiveness. Finally, neither responsibility or humility were found to moderate the relationship between self-forgiveness and well-being. Limitations, suggestions for future research, and clinical implications are discussed.

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