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. 2025 Dec 24;44(3):540–552. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.70032

Why do children and adults believe others apologize?

Ju‐eun Oh 1, Kyong‐sun Jin 1,✉
PMCID: PMC13452002  PMID: 41439565

Abstract

Apologies are a fundamental social mechanism for repairing harm and maintaining relationships, yet little is known about how individuals infer the motives behind them. This study examined how 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 64, 48.4% female; all participants were Korean) and adults (N = 132, 52.3% female; all Korean) attribute motives to wrongdoers' apologies, focusing on internal motives (guilt, shame) and external motives (relational concern, avoidance of punishment). Participants were presented with stories in which a wrongdoer caused either intentional harm (intentional‐harm condition) or accidental harm (accidental‐harm condition), apologized to the victim and then rated why the wrongdoer apologized based on four possible motives. Children primarily attributed relational concern to apologizers, viewing apologies as behaviours aimed at maintaining social relationships. They endorsed both relational concern and punishment avoidance more strongly for apologies following intentional rather than accidental harm. Adults endorsed a broader range of motives, most strongly attributing guilt to apologizers. Their responses varied by harm intentionality, showing stronger attributions of guilt for accidental harm and stronger attributions of punishment avoidance for intentional harm. These findings reveal developmental and contextual differences in how individuals understand the motives underlying apologies.

Keywords: apology, child development, intention, motive attribution, social cognition

Statement of contribution.

  • We examined how 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children and adults attribute motives to wrongdoers' apologies following intentional and accidental harms.

  • Children primarily view apologies as motivated by relational concern, whereas adults most strongly attribute them to guilt.

  • Children endorse relational concern and punishment avoidance more for apologies following intentional harm than for accidental harm.

  • Adults endorse greater guilt for apologies following accidental harm but more punishment avoidance for apologies following intentional harm.

One of life's unfortunate certainties is that we sometimes hurt others, whether intentionally or accidentally. When this occurs, people often apologize. Both adults and children understand that apologies play a crucial role in repairing harm and eliciting forgiveness (Cohen, 1999; Darby & Schlenker, 1982; Fehr et al., 2010; McCullough et al., 2014; Ohbuchi et al., 1989; Tavuchis, 1993; Vaish, 2018; Yucel & Vaish, 2021). Although apologies may appear to be straightforward gestures, they can be driven by a range of underlying motives that recipients must interpret and evaluate (e.g., Lazare, 2004). Surprisingly, little is known, however, about how adults and children infer these motives. The present research addressed this gap.

Apologies play a crucial role in repairing harm and eliciting forgiveness, a fact that both adults and children understand (for reviews, see Fehr et al., 2010; Lewis et al., 2015; Vaish, 2018; Yucel & Vaish, 2021). In adults, apologies are well documented as reparative acts: victims usually desire apologies from offenders (De Cremer et al., 2011; Petrucci, 2002), and apologies help appease negative feelings and foster forgiveness (e.g., Fehr et al., 2010; McCullough et al., 1997; Ohbuchi et al., 1989; O'Malley & Greenberg, 1983). Beyond their immediate impact, apologies have lasting effects by reducing anger towards the offender, enhancing the perceived value of the relationship and promoting forgiveness even weeks later (McCullough et al., 2014).

Children, too, understand the reparative function of apologies. Even 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children judge scenarios in which an apology is offered following a transgression as more just than those without one (Irwin & Moore, 1971), and children aged 4–8 years evaluate transgressors more positively and are more forgiving when an apology is offered (e.g., Banerjee et al., 2010; Darby & Schlenker, 1982, 1989; Oostenbroek & Vaish, 2019). Young children also expect that victims will feel less negative when they receive an apology (Smith et al., 2010; Vaish et al., 2011). For example, when 4‐year‐olds observed two adults each break a different object belonging to a third adult—one who apologized and one who did not—they expected the victim to feel less angry at the apologetic transgressor than at the unapologetic one (Vaish et al., 2011). Similarly, 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children who experienced minor transgressions themselves reported feeling better and rated the transgressor as nicer when they received an apology (Ma et al., 2018; Smith & Harris, 2012).

Although prior research has examined how adults and children understand the reparative functions of apologies, far less is known about how they understand the underlying motives behind them. Philosophical and psychological accounts of apologies distinguish two primary types of motives (e.g., Lazare, 2004). Internal motives involve emotions such as guilt or shame, with apologizers seeking to restore their dignity or self‐esteem (e.g., Schumann, 2014). External motives involve preserving relationships or avoiding punishment, with apologizers aiming to manage others' perceptions or protect themselves (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1998). In real‐world contexts, apologies often reflect a mix of these motives, and observers' inferences may shape their judgements of an apology's sincerity and effectiveness.

Evidence that adults and children do not treat all apologies the same suggests that they might be sensitive to underlying motives of others' apologies. Adults evaluate apologies that verbally convey internal motives, such as remorse or acceptance of responsibility, as more sincere and more likely to be forgiven than apologies that mention self‐protective elements, such as justification or victim‐blaming (Anderson et al., 2006; Kirchhoff et al., 2012; Schumann, 2014, 2018). Children also demonstrate nuanced evaluations of apologies: 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds prefer transgressors who apologize with a reason (e.g., ‘I'm sorry, I thought this was my picture’) over those who apologize without explanation (Waddington et al., 2023), and they expect victims to avoid transgressors who repeat the same reason after repeated harm compared to those who offer a new reason (Waddington et al., 2022). By ages 7–9, children view coerced apologies, those in which a child transgressor initially refuses to apologize but then does so only after the teacher insists, as less effective in communicating remorse than prompt apologies, in which the transgressor immediately complies with the teacher's prompt (Smith et al., 2017). Together, these findings suggest that both adults and children take into account motives and reasons, whether explicitly mentioned or implied, when evaluating apologies.

To date, only one study has directly examined how children infer motives behind apologies (Banerjee et al., 2010). In this study, 4‐ to 9‐year‐olds heard stories in which a transgressor committed either a moral or a social‐conventional violation in the presence of peers and then offered either an apology or an excuse to the peers. When asked open‐ended questions about the transgressor's motives, that is, why she apologized or offered an excuse, children across ages attributed self‐protective motives, such as avoiding punishment, more often to excuses than to apologies, particularly for moral violations. In addition, across both the moral and conventional transgressions, younger children (4‐ to 7‐year‐olds) inferred motives related to punishment avoidance (e.g., ‘he didn't want to get punished as much’), reputational concerns (e.g., ‘she doesn't want the other girl to think she did something wrong’), or relational concerns (e.g., ‘he wants to be friends’). Older children (8‐ to 9‐year‐olds) were increasingly likely to infer internal motives, such as guilt or concern for others' feelings (e.g., ‘he might have hurt the other person by snatching it’). These findings suggest that preschool children focus more on external or strategic motives, whereas the ability to infer internal motives emerges gradually. However, a majority (52%) of children's open‐ended responses were categorized as ‘other’ (e.g., do not know), underscoring the need for further research using more structured methods.

The present study investigated how both adults and children attribute motives to others' apologies. Using scenarios in which a wrongdoer harmed a victim and apologized, we examined the extent to which internal motives (guilt, shame) and external motives (relationship maintenance, punishment avoidance) are attributed, and whether these attributions differ depending on whether the harm was intentional or accidental. Because intentional transgressions involve deliberate harm, the underlying motives of apologies in such contexts may be interpreted differently than those following accidental harm.

Relatedly, prior work with adults suggests a notable difference in how apologies are perceived depending on the wrongdoer's intent: apologies following intentional harm are perceived as less effective than those following accidental harm, and in some cases, adults even view them as ironically impeding forgiveness rather than facilitating it (Struthers et al., 2008). Evidence on children's understanding of apologies after intentional harm is more limited, as most prior developmental work has focused on accidental harm (e.g., Oostenbroek & Vaish, 2019; Smith et al., 2010; Smith & Harris, 2012; Vaish et al., 2011). Emerging research, however, shows that by ages 5–6, children begin to consider a wrongdoer's intentions when evaluating apologizers, allocating fewer resources to an intentional wrongdoer (e.g., breaking a victim's object after saying, ‘I'm going to break this now’) than to an accidental wrongdoer (e.g., breaking the object after saying, ‘I'm going to give this back to you’), even if both apologized afterward (McElroy et al., 2023). Together, these findings hint at the possibility that adults and even children interpret the motives behind apologies differently depending on whether the harm was intentional or accidental.

Building on prior work, the present study examined the motives adults and 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children attribute to apologies. We focused on 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds because children at this age are able to understand the reparative function of apologies (e.g., Darby & Schlenker, 1989; Oostenbroek & Vaish, 2019; Smith et al., 2010; Smith & Harris, 2012; Vaish et al., 2011) and begin to appreciate context‐sensitive consequences of apologizing (e.g., McElroy et al., 2023; Waddington et al., 2022, 2023). Adults were included for comparison.

Based on evidence that 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds provide externally driven motives (e.g., avoiding punishment, relational concerns) rather than internal motives (e.g., guilt) in open‐ended responses (Banerjee et al., 2010), we expected children in general to infer internal motives less than adults. Consistent with prior evidence that children respond differently to intentional versus accidental transgressors even when both apologize (McElroy et al., 2023), we predicted that children would attribute more external motives to apologies following intentional harm than to those following accidental harm, with these differences most evident in their attribution of external motives, reflecting the tendency of children at this age to focus on externally observable motives. Guided by adult literature (e.g., Struthers et al., 2008), we hypothesized that adults would attribute more internal motives to apologies offered after accidental harm and more external motives to apologies offered after intentional harm. This study addresses a key gap in prior research, which has largely focused on children's understanding of the reparative function of apologies following accidental transgressions and provides a clearer picture of how children and adults interpret apology motives across both intentional and accidental contexts.

METHOD

Participants

Child participants

Sixty‐four Korean children aged 5–6 years (31 female; M age = 6.19 years, SD = 0.43) participated. One additional child was excluded for providing identical responses throughout. Children were randomly assigned to either the intentional‐harm or accidental‐harm condition and were asked to indicate the extent to which they believed four motives (guilt, shame, relational concern and avoidance of punishment) were underlying the wrongdoer's apology. An a priori power analysis (G*Power 3.1.9.4; Faul et al., 2009) to detect a within–between interaction, with a 2‐level between‐subjects factor and a 4‐level within‐subjects factor, assuming a small to medium effect size (f = 0.15) with α = .05, indicated a required sample of 62 to achieve 80% power. Participants were recruited through advertisements in widely accessible Korean online parenting communities or through local kindergartens. Written parental consent was obtained. The study protocol for this and the adult experiment was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Sungshin Women's University.

Adult participants

One hundred thirty‐two Korean adults (52.3% female; M age = 38.84 years, SD = 11.18) completed an online survey. Three additional participants were excluded for providing identical responses. Participants were randomly assigned to either the intentional‐harm (N = 67) or accidental‐harm (N = 65) condition. A sensitivity power analysis for a mixed‐design ANOVA, assuming a within–between interaction with one between‐subjects factor (2 levels) and one within‐subjects factor (4 levels), indicated that this sample provided 80% power to detect a small effect (f = 0.10).

Materials and procedures

Child participants

Children participated either online (N = 39) or in‐person (N = 25). Visual stimuli created in Microsoft PowerPoint were used in both formats. In online sessions, an experimenter presented the stimuli via Zoom screen‐sharing; during in‐person sessions, children viewed the stimuli on a monitor in a quiet room at the lab or their institution. In both formats, a female experimenter read the stories aloud while presenting the images and asked children to answer questions following each story. All sessions were video‐recorded.

Intentional‐harm condition

Children in the intentional‐harm condition heard two stories in which one child deliberately harmed another child's object (broken‐cup story) or body (falling‐down story), accompanied by images (Figure 1). The order of the two stories was counterbalanced, and the gender of the two children in the stories matched the participant's gender. In the broken‐cup story, children heard: ‘This happened in a classroom. Jimin was jealous of this child's beautiful cup, so Jimin broke it. This child was very, very sad’ (translated from Korean). In the falling‐down story, children heard: ‘This happened at school. Yuna was walking with this child. Yuna was angry at the child, so she pushed the child. This child was very, very hurt’.

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

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Examples of the pictures presented with the intentional‐harm condition. Left: broken‐cup story; Right: falling‐down story.

After each story, children were told that the wrongdoer had apologized (e.g., ‘[The wrongdoer] apologized to this child’) and were asked why they thought the wrongdoer had apologized. The experimenter presented four possible motives based on philosophical theories of apology (e.g., Lazare, 2004): two internal motives—guilt (e.g., ‘Do you think [the wrongdoer] apologized because she felt uncomfortable about what she did to the child?’) and shame (‘Do you think [the wrongdoer] apologized because she was ashamed of her own wrongdoing?’)—and two external motives—relational concern (‘Do you think [the wrongdoer] apologized because she wanted to keep getting along with this child?’) and avoidance of punishment (‘Do you think [the wrongdoer] apologized because she didn't want to get scolded by the teacher?’). Two control items were also included, referencing the weather (‘Do you think [the wrongdoer] apologized because the weather was very nice?’) and the wrongdoer's hunger (‘Do you think [the wrongdoer] apologized because she was hungry?’) (Marshall et al., 2022). The hunger item was always presented first to familiarize participants with the scale, and the order of the remaining items was counterbalanced across children. For each item, children first answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’, then indicated the strength of their response (a little bit, moderately or a lot) using three sizes of smiling or frowning faces. Responses were coded on a 6‐point scale (1 = no, a lot to 6 = yes, a lot) and averaged across the two stories to serve as the primary outcome measures.

Accidental‐harm condition

Children in the accidental‐harm condition heard similar stories to those in the intentional‐harm condition, except the harm was accidental (Figure 2). In the broken‐cup story, children heard: ‘This happened in a classroom. Jimin was handing a cup to this child but accidentally dropped it and broke the child's cup. This child was very, very sad’. In the falling‐down story, children heard: ‘Yuna was walking with this child. Yuna saw a big bug near her foot. While avoiding the bug, Yuna accidentally bumped into this child, pushing her. This child was very, very hurt’. We kept the images in the two conditions as identical as possible to avoid providing additional visual cues. For example, in the broken‐cup story, the same picture was used for both the intentional‐harm and accidental‐harm conditions. In the falling‐down story, the only difference was that, in the accidental condition, the image included a big bug that startled the wrongdoer, causing him or her to accidentally bump into the victim. After listening to each story, children answered the same motive and control questions as those used in the intentional‐harm condition.

FIGURE 2.

FIGURE 2

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Examples of pictures used in the accidental‐harm condition. Left: broken‐cup story (same as in the intentional‐harm condition); Right: falling‐down story.

Adult participants

Adults completed the study online, reading the same stories, viewing the same pictures and answering the same motive and control questions as the children. Although the materials were designed for children, adults were instructed to respond from their own perspective. The order of the two stories and the questions was randomized.

RESULTS

We examined children's and adults' endorsement of motives for wrongdoers' apologies as a function of whether the wrongdoer had intentionally or accidentally harmed another. To do so, we conducted a mixed ANOVA with motive type (guilt, shame, relational concern, avoidance of punishment) as a within‐subjects factor, condition (intentional‐harm, accidental‐harm), and age group (child, adult) as between‐subjects factors. We found a significant motive type × condition × age group interaction, F(3, 576) = 8.43, p < .001, η p 2 = .04. To unpack this interaction, we conducted separate ANOVAs for each age group with motive type × condition. Before reporting these age‐specific analyses, we first describe the preliminary analyses conducted for each age group.

For children, preliminary analyses showed no significant interaction among motive type and condition with children's gender or testing platforms (online vs. in‐person), Fs(3, 180) < 1.61, ps > .18; the data were therefore collapsed across these factors. The main ANOVA analyses on children's data with motive type × condition revealed a significant main effect of motive type, F(3, 186) = 8.89, p < .001, η p 2 = .13 (Figure 3a). Pairwise comparisons revealed that, overall, children endorsed relational concern more than any other motive (all ps < .005; Bonferroni‐adjusted), with no significant differences among the remaining motives. One‐sample t‐tests against the midpoint (3.5) revealed that children's rating of relational concern (M = 4.47, SD = 1.38) was significantly above the midpoint, t(63) = 5.61, p < .001. The other three motives did not differ from the midpoint, |t(63)|s < 0.53, ps > .60 (guilt: M = 3.59, SD = 1.43; shame: M = 3.50, SD = 1.51; avoidance of punishment: M = 3.45, SD = 1.39). Children's ratings of the two control motives were significantly below the midpoint, ts(63) < −7.41, ps < .001 (hunger: M = 1.94, SD = 0.96, weather: M = 2.29, SD = 1.31). Inspection of children's binary responses (yes or no) revealed similar findings. Across the two trials, the 64 children produced 89 ‘yes’ responses and 39 ‘no’ responses to the question of whether they thought the wrongdoer apologized due to relational concerns, p < .0001 (cumulative binomial probability). For guilt, children produced 64 ‘yes’ and 64 ‘no’ responses, p = .53; for shame, 63 ‘yes’ and 65 ‘no’, p = .60; and for avoidance of punishment, 64 ‘yes’ and 64 ‘no’, p = .53.

FIGURE 3.

FIGURE 3

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Children's (a) and adults' (b) endorsement of different apologetic motives as a function of the wrongdoer's harm intention. The y‐axis shows mean ratings on a 6‐point scale following the initial yes/no response (1 = ‘no, a lot’, 6 = ‘yes, a lot’). Bars represent group means for each condition and motive; dots represent individual data points, and error bars indicate the standard error of the mean.

There was also a significant main effect of condition, F(1, 62) = 4.68, p = .034, η p 2 = .07, which was importantly qualified by a significant interaction between motive type and condition, F(3, 186) = 2.84, p = .039, η p 2 = .04. Follow‐up independent‐sample t‐tests indicated no significant differences between conditions for guilt, t(62) = 0.87, p = .387, or shame, t(62) = −0.66, p = .512. However, significant condition effects were found for both relational concern, t(62) = 2.86, p = .006, and avoidance of punishment, t(62) = 2.48, p = .016, suggesting that children were more likely to endorse these external motives for the wrongdoer's apology when the apology followed intentional harm compared to accidental harm. Inspection of children's binary (yes/no) responses revealed similar but less sensitive patterns than those observed in the rating data. For guilt, across the two trials, children in the intentional‐harm condition produced 33 ‘yes’ and 31 ‘no’ responses overall, p = .45 (cumulative binomial probability), whereas children in the accidental‐harm condition produced 31 ‘yes’ and 33 ‘no’ responses, p = .65; the distribution did not differ significantly between conditions by a Fisher's exact test, p = .86. For shame, children in the intentional‐harm condition produced 30 ‘yes’ and 34 ‘no’ responses, p = .73, and those in the accidental‐harm condition produced 33 ‘yes’ and 31 ‘no’ responses, p = .45; again, the distribution did not differ significantly between conditions, p = .72. For relational concerns, children in the intentional‐harm condition produced 53 ‘yes’ and 11 ‘no’ responses, p < .0001, whereas children in the accidental‐harm condition produced 36 ‘yes’ and 28 ‘no’ responses, p = .19; these distributions differed significantly across conditions, p = .002. Finally, for avoidance of punishment, children in the intentional‐harm condition produced 37 ‘yes’ and 27 ‘no’ responses, p = .13, whereas children in the accidental‐harm condition produced 27 ‘yes’ and 37 ‘no’ responses, p = .92; this distributional difference did not reach significance, p = .11.

For adults, preliminary analyses revealed no significant interaction among motive type and condition with participants' gender, F(3, 384) = 0.23, p = .874; the data were therefore collapsed across participants' gender. The main ANOVA analyses with motive type × condition revealed a significant main effect of motive type, F(3, 390) = 33.48, p < .001, η p 2 = .21 (Figure 3b). Pairwise comparisons showed that adults endorsed guilt more than any other motive (all ps < .005; Bonferroni‐adjusted). Additionally, adults endorsed relational concern more than either shame (p = .012) or avoidance of punishment (p = .048). No other pairwise comparisons were significant. One‐sample t‐tests against the midpoint (3.5) revealed that adults' ratings of guilt (M = 5.14, SD = 1.20), t(131) = 15.69, p < .001, and relational concern (M = 4.19, SD = 1.65), t(131) = 4.76, p < .001 were significantly above the midpoint. Ratings of shame (M = 3.76, SD = 1.75) and avoidance of punishment (M = 3.75, SD = 1.67) tended to be above the midpoint, ts(131) > 1.71, ps < .09. The two control items were significantly below the midpoint, ts(131) < −73.56, ps < .001 (hunger: M = 1.13, SD = 0.35, weather: M = 1.16, SD = 0.37).

There was also a significant main effect of condition, F(1, 130) = 4.02, p = .047, η p 2 = .03, which was qualified by a significant interaction between motive type and condition, F(3, 390) = 25.51, p < .001, η p 2 = .16. Follow‐up independent‐sample t‐tests indicated no significant differences between conditions for shame, t(130) = 1.45, p = .151, or relational concern, t(130) = −0.52, p = .605. However, significant condition effects were found for guilt, t(130) = −4.10, p < .001, and avoidance of punishment, t(130) = 7.88, p < .001, suggesting that adults were more likely to endorse guilt explanations for apologies following accidental harm and more likely to endorse avoidance of punishment explanations for apologies following intentional harm.

DISCUSSION

The present study examined how children and adults infer the motives underlying others' apologies, such as guilt, shame, relational concern and avoidance of punishment. We found that 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds primarily attributed relational concern to wrongdoers who apologized to a victim. Moreover, children adjusted their endorsement of motives based on the intentionality of the transgression. Specifically, they attributed higher levels of both relational concern and avoidance of punishment to apologies following intentional harm than to those following accidental harm, suggesting that children viewed apologies after intentional harm as attempts to maintain positive relationships or as self‐serving acts.

In contrast, adults showed a different pattern. They endorsed a broader range of motives than children and most strongly endorsed guilt as a motive for others' apologies. Similar to children, adults attributed more punishment avoidance to apologies following intentional harm than to those following accidental harm. However, unlike children, adults attributed guilt more strongly to apologies following accidental harm than to those following intentional harm. These findings suggest that adults adjust their inferences about both external and internal motives for others' apologies depending on the intentionality of the transgression.

Children's overall preference for relational concern as an explanation for apologies suggests they may view apologies primarily through a social lens, as behaviours aimed at maintaining relationships and promoting social harmony. This interpretation aligns with prior observational research showing that, across multiple cultures, caregivers and teachers routinely encourage or prompt preschool children to apologize during peer conflicts as a means of socializing them to resolve conflicts and preserve relationships (e.g., Björk‐Willén, 2018; Burdelski, 2013; Danby & Baker, 1989). Additional work indicates that preschool children's apologetic behaviour in play settings is shaped by peer culture: because collaborative play is central to young children's friendships, disruptions to play (e.g., physically harming others) can be perceived as threatening to the relationship, prompting children to apologize in order to regain access to play (Kampf & Blum‐Kulka, 2007). Although relational concern in these situations can appear to be an external or ‘strategic’ motive, driven by the wrongdoer's attempt to manage others' perceptions or preserve relationships, it also serves an important reparative function. Part of this motive is other‐oriented, seeking to meet the victim's needs by restoring positive feelings, acknowledging wrongdoing, and reaffirming trust (Lazare, 2004). Indeed, children recognize that a simple apology can help achieve these goals, including restoring emotions and rebuilding trust towards the transgressor (e.g., Ma et al., 2018).

Our findings support and extend the literature on young children's ability to incorporate others' intentions in their sociomoral reasoning (for a review, see Buon & Margoni, 2025). A wealth of evidence suggests that even preverbal infants are sensitive to agents' positive intentions in their sociomoral evaluations (e.g., Hamlin, 2013; Hamlin et al., 2013; Woo et al., 2017; for a review, see Woo et al., 2023). By 3 years of age, children can already evaluate intentional but failed harm more negatively than accidental harm (Margoni & Surian, 2020), indicating that preschoolers possess sophisticated intention‐based moral reasoning abilities. Echoing these findings, our results show that 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children attribute apologetic motives differently depending on whether the harm was intentional or accidental. Specifically, they were more likely to endorse relational concern and avoidance of punishment as motives when the wrongdoer's harm was intentional than when it was accidental.

At least two possibilities could explain these results. One possibility is that children inferred that the consequences of intentional harm are more severe than those of accidental harm and therefore viewed the wrongdoer's apology as more focused on addressing these consequences. For example, they might have reasoned that repairing a relationship after intentional harm is more difficult than after accidental harm (Vaish et al., 2010), or that punishment would be harsher in cases of intentional harm (Amir et al., 2021; Cushman et al., 2013). Another possibility is that children inferred the wrongdoer's apologetic intention as less sincere following intentional harm (McElroy et al., 2023), focusing instead on how the wrongdoer would be perceived by others or how the wrongdoer was motivated by self‐interest. Future research could tease apart these possibilities by manipulating whether the victim or an authority figure capable of administering punishment is aware of the harm, as even infants and young children take others' knowledge into account in their sociomoral reasoning (for a review, see Baillargeon et al., 2016).

While adults attributed a broader range of motives to others' apologies, children appeared to view apologies primarily as reflecting relational concern. One notable difference between children and adults was in the attribution of guilt. Adults most strongly endorsed guilt as a motive and endorsed it more strongly for accidental than intentional harm, perhaps reflecting an understanding that genuine remorse is more likely when someone causes unintended harm (Struthers et al., 2008). In contrast, children did not perceive guilt as a primary reason for apologizing, regardless of the wrongdoer's intention.

These results with children may be explained in at least two ways. First, children are often prompted to apologize even when they do not genuinely feel remorse (Smith et al., 2017). Second, children may require additional cues, such as explicit expressions of remorse (e.g., Oostenbroek & Vaish, 2019) or more detailed, contextually relevant apology content (Waddington et al., 2022, 2023), to fully recognize guilt as a motive for an apology. Future research could test this possibility by systematically manipulating the content of apologies and examining how children attribute guilt to the wrongdoer.

Although our inclusion of Korean children addresses the lingering limitation of overreliance on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) samples in developmental psychology (Rad et al., 2018), future work should examine whether the present findings generalize to other cultural contexts. In particular, children in more individualistic cultures, where interpersonal relationships and group harmony are typically valued less than in collectivistic cultures such as Korea (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1994), may not prioritize relational concerns to the same extent as the Korean children in our study. However, our adult data indicate that the findings with Korean children do not simply reflect a cultural tendency for collectivism to privilege relational concerns. Korean adults in our study placed greater weight on guilt as an apologetic motive, an emotion often noted as being associated with more individualistic responses to transgression (e.g., Bedford & Hwang, 2003; Wong & Tsai, 2007). Thus, adults in this cultural context do not necessarily show stronger relational concerns as apologetic motives, as one might expect in the interpersonal harm scenarios presented here. This pattern raises the possibility that children's responses may instead be driven by age‐related emphases on relationships in reasoning about apologetic motives rather than cultural collectivism per se. Future studies including children from more individualistic cultures would offer a clearer test of this possibility.

Another open question regarding the generalizability of the present findings is whether similar patterns would emerge in first‐person situations, when individuals evaluate an apology as victims rather than as uninvolved observers. Prior research suggests that adult victims overestimate the intentionality of others' accidental transgressions while underestimating the transgressor's guilt (Adams & Inesi, 2016), which may lead them to interpret the motives behind an apology more like they would for intentional harm. At the same time, adults who commit accidental harm judge their own actions more harshly than third‐party observers (Hirschfeld‐Kroen et al., 2021) and may apologize more than victims expect (Leunissen et al., 2013). This additional apologetic behaviour could partially offset victims' tendency to overattribute harmful intent. Comparable research with children is scarce, but future studies could examine how victims, both children and adults, interpret apologies when transgressors judge their own accidental harm as severely as or more severely than third‐party observers. Such work would clarify how perspective (victim vs. observer), the transgressor's self‐evaluation, and developmental factors jointly shape the interpretation of others' apologies.

Several limitations of the present research should be noted. First, our study relied on hypothetical vignettes designed to be age‐appropriate for young children, which may have limited the extent to which participants engaged with them as reflective of real‐life transgressions. Future research should examine motive inferences in more ecologically valid contexts. Second, we presented participants with a set of possible motives for apologies rather than asking them to generate explanations on their own. While this allowed us to directly assess children's and adults' endorsement of specific motives, future research could explore how they explain apologetic motives in their own words through open‐ended responses. Finally, we used both in‐person and online testing for children to facilitate data collection and obtain a more diverse sample. Although our analyses, consistent with previous findings (Kim et al., 2024), found no differences in children's responses across formats, the use of blended methods remains a procedural limitation worth noting.

Despite these limitations, the present study provides novel insights into how children and adults reason about the motivations underlying others' apologies. Children predominantly believed that wrongdoers apologize to preserve positive relations with the victim and, notably, attributed both relational concern and avoidance of punishment more to intentional than accidental harm. Adults, in contrast, endorsed a broader range of motives, including internal motives such as guilt, attributing guilt more strongly for accidental harm and avoidance of punishment more strongly for intentional harm. Together, these findings provide initial insights into how children and adults make sense of an important social behaviour in the context of conflict and harm—the act of apologizing after wrongdoing.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Ju‐eun Oh: Formal analysis; methodology; conceptualization; investigation; writing – original draft; data curation. Kyong‐sun Jin: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; writing – review and editing; writing – original draft; supervision; formal analysis; project administration; data curation.

FUNDING INFORMATION

This study was supported by a grant from the Sungshin Women's University Research Grant of 2024 to Kyong‐sun Jin.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

There are no conflicts of interest by any of the authors.

ETHICS APPROVAL STATEMENT

This study was approved by the institutional ethics review board at Sungshin Women's University.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the Child Development Laboratory at Sungshin Women's University for their help with data collection and coding, and the parents and children who participated in the research. We thank Jihyun Hwang for helpful discussions that contributed to this research.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data to reproduce the analyses presented here are publicly available at the following URL: https://osf.io/5wrdk/?view_only=789d10c1fc5e4b9f9a7c7d572152f75c. The materials necessary to attempt to replicate the findings are available from the corresponding author. The analyses presented here were not pre‐registered.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

The data to reproduce the analyses presented here are publicly available at the following URL: https://osf.io/5wrdk/?view_only=789d10c1fc5e4b9f9a7c7d572152f75c. The materials necessary to attempt to replicate the findings are available from the corresponding author. The analyses presented here were not pre‐registered.

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