Perpetrators' folk explanations of their regretted and justified aggressive behaviors

When people explain why they behaved aggressively, they can refer to their thought process that led to their aggressive behavior - so-called reason explanations - or to other factors that preceded their thought process - so-called causal history of reasons explanations. People's choice of what mode of explanation they give might be affected by whether they want to distance themselves (or not) from their past aggressive behaviors. To test these ideas, participants in the current study (N = 429) either recalled an aggressive behavior they regret or an aggressive behavior they believe was justified. Participants then explained why they behaved aggressively. Mostly, people gave reason explanations for their aggressive behaviors, which is consistent with past research on how people explain intentional behaviors. Further, and as predicted, participants who explained behaviors they believe were justified gave (relatively) more reason explanations and participants who explained behaviors they regretted gave (relatively) more causal history of reasons explanations. These findings are consistent with the idea that participants adjust their explanations to either provide a rationale for, or to distance themselves from, their past aggressive behaviors.