An effortful apology: The effect of pen pressure on perceived sincerity

Abstract

Apart from word contents, can emotion in an apology letter also be intensified by tactile perception? This study tried to investigate how word contents and pen pressure, as felt by touching the marks left on the paper, affect people’s perceptions of the feelings of guilt, shame, regret, and sincerity in an apology letter. Eighty undergraduate participants took part in the study, which utilized a 2 (emotional vs neutral contents) × 2 (heavy vs light pen pressure) factorial design. The findings showed that emotional word contents significantly elevated the degrees of all the emotional attributes, whereas heavy pen pressure only led to a significant increase in the shame rating. In addition, only the guilt and regret ratings significantly contributed to the sincerity rating, which was positively correlated to the likelihood of being forgiven. Heavy pen pressure was suggested to be a transformed aggressive reaction to shame, which explained its exclusive effect on the shame rating, whereas the non-significant predictive power of shame in relation to sincerity was probably a result of its self-focused orientation, which showed a less constructive approach to remediation. Yet, in the two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) design adopted in this study, the apology letters written with heavy pen pressure were chosen more than those written with light pen pressure; this was probably due to the seriousness of the attitude indicated by the writing strength. It is suggested that future studies further explore the role of graphology (e.g., typefaces and fonts) on people’s emotional judgements.