Article

Conflict Management and Peace Science

2023, Vol. 40(4) 419–440
Crafting international apologies that © The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/07388942221094761
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Shoko Kohama
Hokkaido University, Japan

Toshiyuki Himichi
Kochi University of Technology, Japan

Kazunori Inamasu
Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

Nobuhiro Mifune
Kochi University of Technology, Japan

Yohsuke Ohtsubo
The University of Tokyo, Japan

Atsushi Tago
Waseda University, Japan and Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway

Abstract
Apologies by political leaders to the citizens of a victimized country have attracted attention in
recent years as a means of improving relations between nations. Existing studies have identified
several elements that make such an apology effective, but from the politician’s point of view, it
is difficult to issue a statement containing all these elements, and they must then be chosen
while considering domestic backlash and relations with countries other than the victimized one.
However, it is not sufficiently clear how the victimized country’s citizens weigh the elements of
the apology when they accept it and how the nature of the harm caused changes this.
Therefore, we conducted a survey experiment in Japan, adopting a conjoint design using scenarios
depicting fictional US presidential apologies to Japan. Our experiment demonstrated three attri-
butes particularly regarded as important in determining whether people would accept an apology:
the reparation amount, whether the apology was official (formality), and the voluntariness of the
apology. However, when something that people consider “sacred” has been harmed, reparation
proposals are counterproductive, and the optimal apology form may depend on the nature of
the harm.

Corresponding author:
Shoko Kohama, Public Policy School, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
Email: skohama@juris.hokudai.ac.jp
420 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

Keywords
Apology, conjoint analysis, experiment, US, Japan

Introduction
Reconciliation between states over past and ongoing wrongdoings is a serious challenge in today’s
world. As evident in East Asia, even with close economic and cultural ties, political relationship
between countries can be easily undermined by countries’ mutual antagonism stemming from
past wrongdoings. Even between countries with a history of friendship, one incident, such as a
crime committed by stationing soldiers, may cause negative sentiment toward the perpetrator
country to spread in the victimized country and sever diplomatic relations. What then can political
leaders do to appease a foreign public’s resentment about past and ongoing incidents?
One increasingly common strategy is for the political leader of the perpetrator country to apolo-
gize. Indeed, the last two decades have witnessed a great number of political apologies, leading
scholars to declare that we now live in the “age of apology” (Brooks, 1999; Gibney et al., 2009;
Okimoto et al., 2015). However, political apologies do not always work, as is shown by the
Japanese government’s repeated apologies that people in the countries victimized during World
War II refused to accept.
Therefore, scholars have investigated key attributes of apologies that improve the victimized
people’s feelings toward the perpetrator country. Some studies were carried out by international
relations scholars (e.g. Kitagawa and Chu, 2021; Lind, 2011; Long and Brecke, 2003; Minow,
2002) and others by social psychologists (e.g. Blatz et al., 2009, 2014; Hornsey and Wohl,
2013; Okimoto et al., 2015; Paez, 2010; Philpot and Hornsey, 2008, 2011; Wohl et al., 2012,
2013). The former studies were inclined to identify what attributes effective apologies must
possess through extensive analyses of historical cases; the latter, on the other hand, examined
the effectiveness of individual attributes using experimental methods but their findings were mixed.
Although these studies have identified elements of apology necessary for reconciliation and
improved relations, they have not adequately covered an important point in the study of inter-
national apologies: the dilemma that politicians face when issuing an apology. Politicians are in
the seat of power, backed by their domestic support base, and they must consider relations with
not only the victimized country but also other nations. Therefore, the apology most acceptable to
the victimized country’s citizens is not always the best one for the politician because, as
Kitagawa and Chu (2021) and Lind (2011) have pointed out, an apology acceptable to these citizens
may cause domestic backlash or negatively affect relations with other countries. In political apolo-
gies, therefore, the key issue is not limited to being aware of the effects of apology elements, but
includes the importance of each apology element and whether the importance changes according to
context, such as the nature of the harm. However, previous studies have not clarified these points.
Another issue relates to methodological differences between international relations and social
psychology: the former examines the comprehensive effects of an apology comprising multiple ele-
ments by focusing on real-world examples of apologies and carefully analyzing them, while the
latter tends to investigate the effects of individual apology elements in hypothetical situations.
To bridge these two approaches, we aimed to obtain knowledge with greater external validity
and policy relevance by examining the effects of apology elements while using the actual interstate
relations between Japan and the US as material.
To that end, this paper examines the impact of multiple apology elements on the acceptability of
apologies and their relative importance in a real-world context using conjoint analysis. In particular,
Kohama et al. 421

we examine the relative significance of multiple attributes of an international apology, namely, the
reparation amount, the novelty of apology, the voluntariness of an apology initiative, and the irrev-
ocability of the apology, building on the insights of existing works (Long and Brecke, 2003;
Ohtsubo et al., 2020). Once we can identify the importance of apology elements, it is possible
for an apology-making leader to select the most efficient message to the victim that could avoid
domestic backlash and negative reaction from other countries.1
We use an online panel of Japanese nationals and hypothetical apologies made by the US presi-
dent to Japan. Their close interaction in the past and present allows us to fabricate a variety of hypo-
thetical contexts in which political apologies might be issued. Namely, we consider presidential
apologies for five issues: the use of A-bombs, air raids during World War II, a sexual crime com-
mitted by a US soldier, an accident involving a US merchant ship, and the US president accidentally
breaking a national treasure (teacup) at an official dinner.
Considering apologies for various harmful acts, we found that people’s demands for an apology
do not necessarily arise in terms of political accountability—they do not seem to demand an
apology because the president is accountable for the harmful act as a politician, but rather seem
to regard the US and its citizens as one group and demand an apology from the president as an
agent responsible for the group. Accordingly, people have vociferously demanded that the president
apologize for harmful acts committed by private US companies as well. This finding suggests that
political leaders need to take appropriate actions to maintain or improve relationships with other
countries when their country is viewed as a perpetrator, even if the government is not directly
responsible for it. Thus, political apology can be a tool of public diplomacy, if not reconciliation.2
The conjoint analysis demonstrates that apologies incurring costs and demonstrating commit-
ment are more effective, which echoes Long and Brecke (2003). For instance, respondents were
more willing to accept apologies associated with a larger amount of reparation. Additionally, apolo-
gies conveyed through official channels and initiated by the political leader of the perpetrator
country were more likely to be accepted. However, we also found that the ideal combination of
apology attributes depended on the issue at stake: people were unwilling to accept an apology
accompanied by monetary compensation for harm to something they considered “sacred,” such
as a national treasure.

Theories on political apology

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of political apologies for the
past wrongdoings of countries and governments. Referring to this trend, Gibney et al. (2009) called
the present era the “age of apology.” Accordingly, a growing number of scholars are paying atten-
tion to political apologies and examining their effect on victims’ perceptions of the perpetrator
group. Some studies have been based on in-depth qualitative analysis of historical cases (Lind,
2009, 2011; Long and Brecke, 2003), but the majority of studies are quantitative (Blatz et al.,
2009, 2014; Hornsey and Wohl, 2013; Kitagawa and Chu, 2021; Okimoto et al., 2015; Paez,
2010; Philpot and Hornsey, 2008, 2011; Wohl et al., 2012, 2013).
These studies have identified various factors to explain why some apologies are successful while
others are not. Comparing apologies made by Germany and Japan for their wrongdoings during
World War II, Lind (2011) argues that an apology triggering a backlash is ineffective because
denials of past violence fuel distrust of and a threat perception of the perpetrator country among
the victimized population. Long and Brecke (2003) studied eight cases of international reconcili-
ation to identify characteristics of successful reconciliation initiatives, namely those that promote
peace between two countries in a long-standing conflict. They found that a reconciliation initiative
422 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

which serves as a costly, novel, voluntary, and irrevocable signal substantially improved interstate
relations.
Psychological research has also examined various aspects of political apologies, such as the vic-
timized groups’ perception/acceptance (e.g. Ohtsubo et al., 2021; Okimoto et al., 2015; Wohl et al.,
2013), the perpetrator group’s perception/acceptance (e.g. Karunaratne and Laham, 2019; McGarty
et al., 2005; Mifune et al., 2019; Ohtsubo et al., 2021; Wohl et al., 2013), and apology effectiveness
(e.g. Blatz et al., 2014; Brown et al., 2008; Kirchhoff and Č ehajić -Clancy, 2014; Philpot and
Hornsey, 2008). Most relevant to the present study is the mixed evidence on the effectiveness of
political apologies. For example, Brown et al. (2008) made use of the Tarnak Farm incident, in
which four Canadian soldiers were accidentally killed by a US fighter jet bombing in
Afghanistan in 2002. Brown et al. (2008) manipulated the presence of an apology in a bogus news-
paper article and found that Canadian participants showed higher forgiveness when the apology
was present. In contrast, Philpot and Hornsey (2008) manipulated the presence of an apology in
interpersonal harm scenarios and found that political apologies failed to promote forgiveness but
did increase the perpetrator group’s perceived remorsefulness and satisfaction with the apologies.
To integrate these insights, Hornsey and Wohl (2013) proposed a trust-based model for responses to
political apologies, which assumes that victims’ trust in the perpetrator group is a crucial moderator
of the effectiveness of political apologies: political apologies promote intergroup forgiveness only
when the victimized group members trust the perpetrator group.
These studies provide important insights into the nature of apologies. One missing perspective,
however, is the dilemma facing politicians in international apologies. Incorporating many elements
that improve sentiment toward the perpetrator may enable a more effective apology statement for
reconciliation with the victim. However, such an apology may not be optimal considering domestic
politics and relations with countries other than the victimized one. Several studies, for example,
have pointed out that certain apology elements are prone to spark a backlash from the perpetrator
country’s citizens, mainly from those who are high in social dominance orientation, which then
reduces the apology’s effectiveness (Kitagawa and Chu, 2021; Lind, 2011; Mifune et al., 2019;
Ohtsubo et al., 2021). Therefore, in analyzing international apologies, it is also important to con-
sider how significant each apology element is for the victimized country’s citizens. However, a fac-
torial experiment simultaneously testing the effects of five factors would yield 32 experimental
conditions, which is not feasible. In contrast, conjoint analysis enables us to examine a greater
number of attributes within a single study, thus allowing simultaneous handling of many variables
without encountering confounding effect problems.
Whether or not relationships between such apology elements vary depending on the nature of the
harm is another question that cannot be ignored when applying existing findings to actual policy.
The real world does not have many instances of apologies being issued for different harmful acts in
the same perpetrator–victim pair of countries, so answering this question requires ingenuity in
research methods.
Regarding research methods, most international relations scholars, through comparative case
studies, have investigated why some past apologies were successful in promoting reconciliation
between states while others were not. While it is not easy to tell which elements were effective
in actual apologies with complex compositions, this method facilitates more realistic and policy-
oriented research. Social and political psychologists more often rely on an experimental approach
whereby some critical aspects of political apologies are manipulated in hypothetical vignettes.
Although this approach somewhat sacrifices reality, it is a successful way to isolate and examine
individual elements of effective political apologies. The findings of studies employing these two
methods have so far not been fully integrated because they have been published in journals in
Kohama et al. 423

different fields. A study that bridges the two methods is necessary, and this paper therefor makes a
new contribution to this research field by positing scenarios for several real or extremely realistic
harmful acts in the context of Japan–US relations and measuring the effect of apology elements for
each. This will lead to a better understanding of apology as an important new policy tool in inter-
national politics.

Hypotheses
Insights from research by international relations scholars and social psychologists converge on the
importance of the credibility of political apologies. Within-country opposition to political apologies
made Japanese apologies ineffective because it undermined Japan’s sincerity as perceived by the
victimized people (Lind, 2011). Long and Brecke (2003) argue that successful reconciliation initia-
tives are those that enhanced the credibility of the perpetrator country’s commitment to the better
future relationship through elements of costly signals (also, Brecke and Long, 1999). The trust-
based model (Hornsey and Wohl, 2013) maintains that suspicion about the perpetrator group’s
motivation undermines the effectiveness of political apologies.
Building on these insights, this study investigates the effects and relative importance of attributes
enhancing the credibility of an international apology. Therefore, our hypotheses directly draw on
the seminal work by Long and Brecke (2003) who argue that a successful reconciliation initiative
after an international war must possess the following attributes: costliness, novelty, voluntariness,
and irrevocability. According to their comparative case studies, successful reconciliation initiatives
were characterized by costliness (e.g. then-Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt promised
huge financial assistance to the Soviet Union and Poland), novelty (e.g. no Egyptian president
before Anwar Sadat had visited Israel), voluntariness (e.g. the reconciliation between El
Salvador and Honduras was mediated by the Organization of American States, and thus cannot
be considered voluntary), and irrevocability (e.g. initiatives made in public, such as Brandt’s pro-
mises and Sadat’s visit to Israel, often cannot be easily withdrawn).3 We examine if their insights
apply to apology statements publicized by the political leader of a perpetrator country and to a pair
of countries, namely the US and Japan, that are not included in their study.
We expect that each of the above attributes makes international apologies more likely to be
accepted. Although previous research has focused on various consequences of apologies, including
an improved perception of the perpetrator country and better bilateral relationships, we focus on
whether the members of the victimized group are willing to accept an apology. This is because
the act of accepting an apology is an important step toward forgiveness and reconciliation. In add-
ition, although improvement in bilateral relations is an important theme from the perspective of
international relations, inter-state relations are influenced by factors other than national sentiment;
therefore, we focus on whether or not the victimized country’s citizens accept the apology as the
first step in improving relations.
Regarding the costliness of apology, we manipulate the amount of reparation. Studies on inter-
personal apologies demonstrate that financially costly apologies signal the perpetrator’s sincerity
and modify the victim’s punitive actions (e.g. Ohtsubo and Watanabe, 2009). This effect was
recently replicated in the context of group apologies, such as from organizations (Ohtsubo et al.,
2020). In the context of international relations, reparation offered to the victimized country or
group would naturally serve as a costly signal.

Hypothesis 1 (Costliness/Reparation): Apologies involving a larger amount of reparation are more likely
to be accepted.4
424 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

The remaining hypotheses are quite straightforward, and are as follows:

Hypothesis 2 (Novelty/Precedents): Unprecedented apologies are more likely to be accepted.

Hypothesis 3 (Irrevocability/Method): Formal apologies made in public are more likely to be accepted.

Hypothesis 4 (Voluntariness/Initiative): Apologies made on the voluntary initiative of the perpetrator

country are more likely to be accepted than those driven by international pressure.

In addition to testing these individual hypotheses, we also explored each element’s relative
importance. Moreover, since harmful acts can take various forms in the modern international com-
munity with complex relations between nations, we assumed several acts with different natures and
investigated in an exploratory way whether the elements the apology must contain differ according
to the nature of the harm. For instance, we wanted to answer the question of whether people prefer
similar apologies for harmful acts during past wars and for accidents and criminal acts in the
modern age.

Research design
We tested our hypotheses using online survey experiments and conjoint analysis.5 For measur-
ing the value that people place on attributes of international apologies, a commonly used fac-
torial design experiment would be inappropriate because the combination of multiple attributes
would necessitate an unmanageable number of study scenarios. To avoid this problem, we
employed conjoint analysis with simulations of real-world situations where citizens receive
apologies from a foreign political leader. Although admittedly citizens rarely choose
between two apology profiles in the real world, we use conjoint analysis as a first step
toward identifying the structure of people’s multidimensional decision-making regarding inter-
national apologies.
Our experiments explored the attributes of transnational intergroup apologies that are associated
with greater acceptance by members of a victimized group, in the hypothetical context of the US
president apologizing to Japan. We chose Japan as the focal country for two reasons. First, US
apologies to Japan allows us to compare the importance of different apology attributes.
Psychological studies suggest that people have a strong tendency not to search for and accept infor-
mation that contradicts their existing belief system (Darley and Gross, 1983; Klayman and Ha,
1987; Nickerson, 1998; Wason, 1960). Accordingly, studies show that public diplomacy by a
country seen in a negative light is ineffective (Kohama et al., 2017). Similarly, Hornsey and
Wohl (2013) argue that political apologies may foster the recipient group’s forgiveness only
when the victims trust the perpetrator group (Hornsey and Wohl, 2013). In other words, if we exam-
ined the effectiveness of political apologies between two countries lacking mutual trust, the floor
effect might prevent us from comparing the effectiveness of different types of political apology.
Therefore, we decided to take advantage of the relatively stable, friendly relationship between
the US and Japan as a first step to test the effects of different elements of political apologies.6
Moreover, because of their past as bitter enemies and their current strong alliance, the Japan–US
relationship provides a diverse range of contexts for examining an apology, ranging from the use of
A-bombs during World War II to problems involving US troops stationed in Japan. Our experiment
uses a combination of real and hypothetical incidents as the context for hypothetical apologies;
details of the scenarios are explained in the next section.
Kohama et al. 425

We collected data from 1368 Japanese nationals aged from 20 to 69. They voluntarily regis-
tered to an online panel that we co-administered with Nikkei Research Inc. Data collection was
conducted between March 4 and 11, 2020. The sample’s demographics are summarized in
Table 1.7
Our study started with questions on demography and on attitudes toward various political
leaders, including former President Trump and former President Obama. Then, each participant
was randomly presented with one of the five scenarios described in the next section.

Scenarios: US apology to Japan

We considered five scenarios in each of which the US or an American is the perpetrator and
Japan is the victimized country. Two of the scenarios were associated with World War II:
the use of nuclear weapons and air raids on Japanese cities. Three other scenarios depicted
hypothetical harmful incidents in contemporary contexts: a sexual assault against a Japanese
woman by a US soldier stationed in Japan, a maritime accident caused by a US merchant
ship in Japanese territorial waters, and the president damaging a precious (kokuho-kyu) teacup at
an official dinner.
These scenarios vary in terms of the US government’s accountability. The government has full
responsibility for military decisions during war. It should also be accountable for a sexual assault by
a US soldier because the government controls the actions of serving military personnel. In contrast,
the maritime accident in our scenario is caused by a private company, for which the government is
not responsible. Lastly, the president himself, and not the government, is liable for damaging the

Table 1. Summary statistics: sample demography.

A-bomb Air raids Crime Accident Misbehavior

. (N = 272) (N = 271) (N = 274) (N = 276) (N = 275)

Age
20–29 11 (4%) 11 (4%) 8 (3%) 11 (4%) 13 (5%)
30–39 53 (19%) 49 (18%) 54 (20%) 55 (20%) 43 (16%)
40–49 80 (29%) 77 (28%) 72 (26%) 81 (29%) 65 (24%)
50–59 65 (24%) 59 (22%) 84 (31%) 62 (22%) 83 (30%)
60–69 63 (23%) 75 (28%) 56 (20%) 67 (24%) 71 (26%)
Gender
Female 141 (52%) 139 (51%) 122 (45%) 143 (52%) 139 (51%)
Education
College graduate 153 (56%) 152 (56%) 149 (54%) 157 (57%) 159 (58%)
Political attitudes
Conservative 94 (35%) 90 (33%) 104 (38%) 89 (32%) 79 (29%)
Liberal 13 (5%) 8 (3%) 7 (3%) 17 (6%) 12 (4%)
Hawk 49 (18%) 40 (15%) 41 (15%) 39 (14%) 45 (16%)
Interested in politics 173 (64%) 192 (71%) 171 (62%) 188 (68%) 179 (65%)
Feeling toward Trump 38 ± 22 34 ± 22 36 ± 23 35 ± 23 37 ± 22
Feeling toward Obama 57 ± 20 61 ± 18 60 ± 19 59 ± 20 59 ± 18
Social dominance orientation
Social dominance orientation score 3.6 ± 0.7 3.5 ± 0.7 3.5 ± 0.7 3.5 ± 0.7 3.5 ± 0.7
426 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

teacup. This range of scenarios allows us to examine the degree to which contextual factors affect
citizens’ evaluation of international apologies.
We randomly assigned one of these five scenarios to each respondent and then asked them the
extent to which they thought the US president should apologize for the incident. Specifically, they
reported their assessment of the need for a presidential apology on a four-point scale (“His apology
is …” 1 = “necessary,” 2 = “desirable,” 3 = “nonessential,” 4 = “unneccesary”). We did not
mention the name of the president at this stage. Thus, this question measured respondents’ baseline
evaluation of each incident.

The experiment
The main part of the survey consisted of five choice tasks on US apologies issued (hypothetic-
ally) by President Trump.8 We presented a pair of apology profiles to each respondent and
asked them to choose the one they would be more likely to accept.9 For each task, a pair of ran-
domly generated apology profiles was presented on a separate screen. Each respondent com-
pleted five choice tasks.10
Survey respondents were shown randomly chosen values of the five attributes of apologies. The
first attribute was the amount of reparation offered by the US president to the Japanese government
for handling the aftermath of the incident (testing Hypothesis 1). This treatment took five values
(none, an apology gift, JPY 30 million, JPY 300 million, and JPY 3 billion). Offering no reparation
was the base category. Giving a gift to show the sincerity of remorse is a common custom among
Japanese, but less costly than reparation. Although the amount of reparation takes a wide range of
values in the real world, we need to select a set of realistic values to obtain externally valid estimates
in a conjoint analysis. One illustrative case is the collision between the submarine USS Greeneville
and the Japanese-fishery high-school training ship Ehime Maru in 2001. Shortly after the collision,
the Ehime Maru sank and nine people, including four high school students, were killed. The US
government agreed to pay approximately JPY1.7 billion (US$13.9 million) to survivors and the
families of victims. A more recent and widely reported case in Japan involved the Japanese gov-
ernment providing JPY1 billion for the elderly care of Korean “comfort women” survivors in
2015; this might have been used as a reference point by our respondents.
The second attribute was the novelty of the apology, represented by the number of precedents of
the US president apologizing for a similar incident (testing Hypothesis 2). It took three values
(none, once, and four times), and no precedent was the base category. We explicitly indicated
that the preceding apologies, if any, were made for similar incidents, rather than the exact event
that respondents were asked to consider. We used this wording to avoid deceiving respondents
because the US government has never issued an apology for using A-bombs and conducting air
raids during the war. We expected that respondents might think of other similar incidents, including
nuclear tests and radiation accidents (e.g. the US$2 million restitution paid by the US government in
response to the accidental irradiation of the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky
Dragon No. 5) and the Three Mile Island accident).
The third attribute that we examined was the formality of how an apology was made. This attri-
bute represented the level of the apology’s revocability (this is for testing Hypothesis 3). Apologies
that are the most difficult to revoke are those made in a formal manner. Accordingly, we considered
five methods of apology with varying degrees of formality: an official interview, an official docu-
ment, an interview on a TV news program, an announcement made by the assistant to the president,
and via the social networking services (SNSs) such as Twitter and Facebook. Using an SNS was
considered the least formal method of apology. The base category was the official interview.
Kohama et al. 427

The fourth attribute was the voluntariness of the apology (testing Hypothesis 4). Apologies may
be made voluntarily by the president or as a result of pressure by others. Therefore, we considered
four different cases where different persons or institutions took the initiative in making or encour-
aging the apology. The base category was the case where the president himself took the initiative.
The other categories were, in descending order of voluntariness, the president being advised to
apologize by the US Congress, the British prime minister, and the Secretary-General of the
United Nations.
The last attribute was included as a filler (Bansak et al., 2021) and to inform respondents about
the political cost that the president incurs by apologizing. Long and Brecke (2003: 20) hypothesized
that an apology making a political leader vulnerable would be more successful in bringing about
reconciliation. However, they found that political vulnerability did not affect international recon-
ciliation when a comparative case study was conducted; it was only relevant in reconciliation pro-
cesses in the context of a civil war. Accordingly, this information might be an appropriate filler. We
considered the backlash from the domestic public and repercussions for other countries that make
the president politically vulnerable. Some Americans would strongly disapprove of their president
apologizing for the use of A-bombs, considering that 56% of them in a 2015 poll said that the
attacks were justified to achieve early termination of the war, although support for this position
is declining in general (Stokes, 2017). Moreover, following a series of apologies by US government
officials, including President George W. Bush, for the Ehime Maru incident, an op-ed in The
Washington Post expressed resentment and claimed that “[t]he United States […] has become
the most apologetic of nations. We are sorry for just about everything,” and “it’s hard to apologize
for an accident” (Cohen, 2001). In the international arena, countries that have similarly endured
similar airstrikes or crimes perpetrated by individuals associated with the US military might
express discontent if the US president apologized only to Japan. A US apology for historical
issues might also have repercussions for international society, especially among Asian countries,
considering that imperial Japan inflicted unbearable suffering on other countries and regions
during World War II. Likewise, for contemporary events, the president may be concerned that
apologizing could increase an incident’s salience and invite further criticism from international
society. In sum, this attribute took four values: none, a backlash from the domestic public, a back-
lash from countries facing similar issues, and a backlash from international society. The situation
with no backlash was the baseline category.
We generated a pair of apology profiles, combining the randomly chosen value of the five attributes:
reparation (costliness), precedents (novelty), method (formality), initiative (voluntariness), and back-
lash (vulnerability). The order of attributes was also randomly chosen but fixed throughout the tasks
for each respondent. We presented the randomly generated apology profiles to each respondent and
asked them to choose which one they were more willing to accept. Respondents completed five
choice tasks in total, with a new pair of apology profiles randomly generated for each task.
After completing the tasks, respondents answered post-experimental questions regarding their
political attitudes and social dominance orientation (Mifune and Yokota, 2018; Pratto et al.,
1994). They were debriefed at the end of the survey.

Results
Pre-attitudes about apology
We first present a descriptive analysis of respondents’ attitudes on the need for a presidential
apology in their randomly assigned scenario. As shown by the results in Table 2, respondents
428 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

demanded a presidential apology more strongly for some particular harms. Regarding the use of
A-bombs, over half of the respondents (51%) answered that a presidential apology is necessary
or desirable. The number decreased to less than half (40%) for the air raids during World War
II. In contrast, when asked about a sexual crime by a US soldier and an accident involving a US
merchant ship in Japanese waters, 75% of respondents answered that the president should apolo-
gize. The number reached almost 80% when respondents were asked about the president’s personal
wrongdoing.
Although we lack comprehensive poll data on Japanese attitudes toward a US apology for its
actions during World War II, in the Japan Times survey of over 600 self-selected Japanese imme-
diately after President Obama announced his visit to Hiroshima in 2016, 38% of respondents said
that he should apologize (Osumi and Kikuchi, 2016). The higher demand for an apology in our
study might be explained by our response scale allowing respondents to choose partial agreement
and the younger generation (particularly respondents in their twenties) being underrepresented in
our sample.
Notably, we found no clear differences in apology demand between groups assigned the follow-
ing three incidents: a soldier’s crime, an accident involving a merchant ship, and the president’s
mishap. These incidents varied in the degree to which the US government was responsible for
the harm. The president is clearly liable for the damage caused by his own action, and as com-
mander in chief is ultimately responsible for problems caused by US troops. Conversely, the admin-
istration is not directly accountable for the accident involving a private company. Nevertheless, a
substantial majority of respondents demanded a presidential apology in the maritime accident scen-
ario. To be fair, we must admit that this is not the only difference in the three scenarios. The
following argument should not be seen as a definitive conclusion that we can draw from the
data. Further experimental studies on the demand for apology is expected to clarify this point.
Nevertheless, this observation suggests that respondents viewed an international apology
through the lens of intergroup relationship, rather than in terms of political accountability. From
respondents believing the president should apologize even for the maritime accident, we infer
that they perceived the US as the target of collective blame. Studies on intergroup relations
show that members of the victimized group blame and punish individuals who belong to the
same outgroup as the wrongdoer, even though they are not directly involved in negative events
(Denson et al., 2006; Lickel et al., 2006). Such folk notions of collective responsibility arise
when the outgroup has high entitativity (Campbell, 1958; Denson et al., 2006). Because the percep-
tion of group entitativity is grounded in social interdependence among group members (Lickel

Table 2. Pre-attitude toward apology.

Dropping of World War II Sexual Maritime Teacup

A-bombs air raids crime accident breakage
(N = 272) (N = 271) (N = 274) (N = 276) (N = 275)

The need for a

presidential apology
Necessary 72 (26%) 54 (20%) 135 (49%) 134 (49%) 147 (53%)
Desirable 69 (25%) 53 (20%) 71 (26%) 78 (28%) 71 (26%)
Non-essential 51 (19%) 73 (27%) 31 (11%) 30 (11%) 33 (12%)
Unnecessary 30 (11%) 48 (18%) 7 (3%) 19 (7%) 13 (5%)
Don’t know 50 (18%) 43 (16%) 30 (11%) 15 (5%) 11 (4%)
Kohama et al. 429

et al., 2000) and sharing similar traits (Yzerbyt et al., 2001), we argue that the Japanese respondents
perceived the US as a unified entity, despite the enormous diversity within the country.
The notion of collective responsibility provides one possible explanation, besides the peculiar
nature of harms during wartime, for respondents’ greater demands for an apology for the three
“ongoing” issues than those related to World War II. People blame other members of an outgroup
for wrongdoings by an individual member because they infer that other members indirectly encour-
aged the act (commission), failed to prevent it (omission), or otherwise share a negative disposition
associated with the perpetrator (Denson et al., 2006; Lickel et al., 2003, 2006). If collective blame is
based on inferences of commission, omission, and/or disposition, it is more likely to be triggered by
wrongdoers at the present time than those in the historical past. Moreover, a recent experiment by
Delton and Krasnow (2017) shows that individuals punish an outgroup perpetrator for harming an
ingroup member because they infer that they may be the next target and so are driven to deter the
perpetrator. Applying deterrence theory (from social psychology) to an apology, it is suggested that
recent wrongdoings invite more severe reactions than historic harms.11

Influence of apology attributes on the likelihood of acceptance

We now test our hypotheses on the effects of attributes of an international apology. Figures 1–5
graphically present the results of a series of conjoint analyses for each scenario of a US presidential
apology. For each scenario, we tested the effect of the following attributes: reparation (costliness),
precedents (novelty), method (formality), initiative (voluntariness), and backlash (vulnerability).
The attributes and their values are listed on the vertical axis. The horizontal axis indicates the
average marginal component-specific effects of each attribute on the probability that a presidential
apology is accepted, as opposed to the base level of the attributes.12
We found that the respondents generally preferred apologies coupled with a larger amount of
reparation (Hypothesis 1). This tendency was observed in the air-raid scenario (Figure 2), the sol-
dier’s crime (Figure 3), and the maritime accident (Figure 4). In these cases, an apology with a
larger amount of reparation was more likely to be accepted.13
However, the amount of reparation had no positive effect on the likelihood of acceptance for an
apology for the use of A-bombs (Figure 1) and for damaging a national treasure (Figure 5).
Regarding the use of A-bombs, we suspect that the amount of reparation offered was perceived
as too small given the magnitude of the destruction. Still, although the effect of reparation was
not distinguishable from zero, it followed the same pattern as in other scenarios: the higher the rep-
aration offered, the more respondents were willing to accept the apology.14
In contrast, offering monetary compensation for damaging a national treasure (even JPY3
billion) backfired (Figure 5). This result echoes the insights of Atran et al. (2007) and Ginges
et al. (2007), who demonstrated in the context of the Israel–Palestine conflict that people expressed
outrage when asked to accept material compensation for damage to their sacred valuables. Although
most national treasures are not perceived as sacred, they are not amenable to economic exchange
mediated by money. Therefore, respondents might have found monetary compensation inappropri-
ate for damage to a national treasure and were thus less likely to accept an apology accompanied by
a reparation payment.15
Regarding Hypothesis 2, we expected that the more novel an apology, the greater the likelihood
of its being accepted. Somewhat supporting our expectation, respondents preferred an unprece-
dented apology for the use of A-bombs, the soldier’s sexual crime, and the damage to a national
treasure. However, for the World War II air raids and the maritime accident, the number of previous
apologies for similar incidents did not affect the likelihood of apology acceptance. This difference
430 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

Figure 1. Impact of attributes on the probability of an apology for use of A-bombs being accepted.

might stem from respondents’ knowledge that US presidents have never apologized for the air raids
or soldiers’ crimes.
Consistent with Hypothesis 3 on the publicness and formality of an apology, respondents were
more willing to accept an apology made formally, such as in an official interview or official docu-
ment. Apologizing in a TV news program was less favored, as was delivering an apology through
an assistant, which respondents probably perceived as indicating a lack of commitment. The least
effective way of apologizing was clearly using social media.
The voluntariness of an apology was also found to influence the likelihood of acceptance, as
predicted by Hypothesis 4. Respondents appreciated the president taking the initiative in making
an apology, but were less likely to accept an apology made under external pressure.
Interestingly, for four of the five incidents (the exception being damage to national treasure),
advice from the US Congress did not undermine the value of an apology in comparison with
one made on the president’s own initiative. This finding suggests that respondents conceived the
Kohama et al. 431

Figure 2. Impact of attributes on the probability of an apology for World War II air raids being accepted.

perpetrator as a group; that is, a US soldier, a US merchant ship, the US Congress, and the US presi-
dent constituted one perpetrator group, even though they might be in dispute with one another in the
domestic political arena. This group-based thinking also underlies the general tendency to expect a
presidential apology for an incident involving US perpetrators despite the apparent lack of govern-
ment liability. However, in the scenario where the president personally caused harm, respondents
expected the president to apologize on his own initiative, and so were less likely to accept an
apology advised by the US Congress.
The last attribute, backlash, was inserted as filler information but our findings warrant consid-
eration. An apology might be more likely to be accepted when it incurs political costs for the presi-
dent, which serve as a costly signal of his sincerity. Contradicting this supposition, a backlash from
other countries discouraged respondents from accepting the president’s apology.16 One possible
explanation is that respondents received a cue from the criticism by other countries and inter-
national society (e.g. Kuklinski and Hurley, 1994; Lupia and McCubbins, 1998). Another possibil-
ity is that, as hypothetical victims, they might have doubted the perpetrator’s commitment to
432 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

Figure 3. Impact of attributes on the probability of an apology for the soldier’s crime being accepted.

reconciliation, suspecting that strong opposition from other countries might cause the president to
withdraw his apology. Interestingly, opposition from the domestic public did not significantly
undermine the value of a presidential apology. This finding is surprising, given the prior argument
that domestic opposition spoils a reconciliatory initiative (most importantly by Lind, 2011). One
possible explanation is that the positive and negative effects of domestic opposition canceled
each other out here. On the one hand, as domestic opposition undermines the president’s reputation
at home, it signals the personal sincerity of the president. On the other hand, it could provoke doubt
about the goodwill of the perpetrator’s group.

Discussion
One question that arises is whether the above results can be generalized or were induced by the idio-
syncratic personality of President Trump. To address this issue, assuming that conservative
Japanese have a more positive attitude toward Trump, we first replicated the above analyses
Kohama et al. 433

Figure 4. Impact of attributes on the probability of an apology for the maritime accident being accepted.

after dividing our sample into conservatives and others.17 The findings remained consistent across
groups, and we found little difference between them.18
For a more direct comparison, we repeated the experiment replacing President Trump with
President Obama. In the follow-up study, we collected 1358 respondents and asked them to
assume that President Obama was still in office and would make the apology. Aside from changing
the identity of the president, the entire experimental procedure was unchanged.
The major findings remained consistent.19 For instance, we found that an apology delivered by
social media was least likely to be accepted, showing that this method was generally perceived to
lack seriousness regardless of the president’s personal traits. Although this finding may seem
obvious, we believe that confirming a widely accepted yet hardly tested claim is one of the
major contributions of this article. Overall, although there were minor differences in findings
between the two studies, we feel safe in asserting that our findings were not affected by factors
that specifically relate to President Trump.
434 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

Figure 5. Impact of attributes on the probability of an apology for damaging the teacup being accepted.

Another issue is whether preferences on apology attributes depend on people’s pre-attitude

toward the need for apology. To investigate this possibility, we conducted an analysis of apologies
for the use of A-bombs and World War II air raids, dividing our sample into those who demanded
and those who did not demand a presidential apology.20 We found little difference in attribute pre-
ferences between those who considered that the president should apologize and those who did
not.21

Conclusion
This article investigated the attributes that make an international apology more likely to be accepted
by the victimized group. Our conjoint analysis demonstrated three key attributes of an effective
international apology. First, the victims are more likely to accept an apology accompanied by a
larger amount of reparation. The reparation amount is the most obvious expression of the costs
Kohama et al. 435

incurred by the perpetrator, and so signals the perpetrator’s sincerity in seeking reconciliation with
the victims. However, reparation is not omnipotent: we found that it may backfire when offered to
compensate for something not amenable to the market economy.
The second key attribute is the formality of apology, which we found to have the largest effect on
the likelihood of acceptance by victims in most scenarios examined. An official apology is the most
preferred method, whereas delegating the apology to an assistant or making it on social media sig-
nificantly reduces the likelihood of acceptance. An official apology is seen as particularly valid
because it reduces suspicion that the reconciliatory action might be revoked in the future.
The third key attribute to appeal to victims is that the political leader of the perpetrator’s country
takes the initiative in making an apology. We found that an apology made under pressure from a
third party was perceived less favorably. Voluntariness is appreciated because it signifies the sin-
cerity of the perpetrator group. An important implication of this finding is that third-party mediation
may not work and may even backfire, even if the mediator is genuinely peace-motivated. Although
conflict management and resolution literature argues that a mediator can help adversaries to share
information and strike a bargain (Beardsley, 2011; Beber, 2012; Kydd, 2003, 2006), it seems that
third-party intervention may not be desirable for achieving reconciliation at the emotional level.
This article makes two significant contributions to the literature and practice. First, to the best of our
knowledge, this is the first study to identify which attributes of an international apology are most import-
ant using a conjoint analysis approach. We found that the amount of reparation, irrevocability, and vol-
untariness are the most important factors in encouraging the victims to accept a foreign political leader’s
apology. That is, apologies incurring costs and demonstrating commitment are more effective. This
finding reveals that an international apology is future oriented: as well as healing past wounds, it is
an important policy tool for building trust and a better relationship among countries.
Second, this article helps policy-makers to better understand the mechanism through which an
international apology is accepted and so craft more effective apologies, when necessary. The most
effective apology is made on the initiative of the political leader of the perpetrator country, deliv-
ered in an official manner, and accompanied by the offer of a substantial amount of reparation. An
important caveat is that offering reparation for harm to a “sacred value” may be counterproductive.
Fortunately for politicians, the factors we found important are those they can manipulate, although
they cannot manipulate the number of preceding apologies or how other countries react. More pre-
cisely, these three factors are vital because they can be manipulated by the perpetrator’s group and
hence can convey its will.
In addition, the experiment described in this paper suggests that people view international apolo-
gies not through the lens of political accountability, but in the framework of collective guilt—in the
experiment, people demanded an apology from the president not just when he was politically
responsible but also for things that at first glance did not seem to be the president’s responsibility;
the accident by a private US company is such a case. In other words, it can be inferred that people
regard the US and Americans as one group and think that the president should apologize on its
behalf. In addition, the idea of intergroup relations seems to be the reason why people demand
apologies more strongly for current harmful acts than for past ones. Incorporating this viewpoint
of intergroup relations may be beneficial for future international relations research.
The reported study has some inherent limitations owing to its methodology. To single out individual
elements that increase/decrease acceptability of political apologies, we relied on the conjoint analysis.
However, this approach necessarily sacrificed the reality of the materials, which were after all “hypo-
thetical” political apologies. Accordingly, one may question whether the results of this study can be gen-
eralizable to the realistic political settings. Future studies need to compare the present findings with
outcomes of the real-world political apologies, which are, however, not ideal to assess the effects of
436 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

individual elements. Therefore, from a different point of view, this limitation points to a fruitful ground
for cross-fertilization between the international relations and social psychology approaches.
We also admit that our study exclusively focused on the US–Japan relationship, which has been
friendly after World War II, and thus may not readily extend to more antagonistic contexts.
However, the relative ease of vignette studies (including the conjoint analysis approach) allows
researchers to conduct comparable studies in different contexts. Whether the findings of this
study can be extended to other contexts, such as Israeli–Palestinian conflict and post-civil war rec-
onciliation, is an empirical question that future studies need to address.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank Ayano Tajima for her excellent research assistance; Charles Crabtree, Yusaku Horiuchi,
Risa Kitagawa, Jennifer Lind, the anonymous reviewers, and the panel participants at the Asian Politics
Online Seminar Series and the Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences at Hokkaido University
for their insightful feedback; and JSPS KAKENHI (17H06189) for their financial support.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, (grant number
20K20278).

ORCID iDs
Shoko Kohama https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5174-7313
Kazunori Inamasu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6618-6536
Atsushi Tago https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9932-3728

Supplemental material
All data, replication materials, and instructions regarding analytical materials upon which published claims
rely are available online through the SAGE CMPS website: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/
07388942221094761

Notes
1. Apologies that are accepted by the victims may be unpalatable to the domestic public; this trade-off is crit-
ical in political apology. As this paper only examines what feature of apologies is acceptable to the
victims, it will not address the above-mentioned trade-off and how domestic backlash can be prevented.
An experiment on such a trade-off is left for future research.
2. The Japan–US context may be considered as an easy case for political apology, compared with ones
between hostile countries, such as Japan–South Korea and Japan–China. If a certain apology factor
fails to increase the likelihood of apologies to be accepted in the Japan–US context, we can logically
expect that the factor would not affect people’s perception under any condition, including political apolo-
gies among hostile countries.
3. The following country dyads were included in the case comparison: USSR–West Germany, India–China,
Egypt–Israel, China–Vietnam, Poland–West Germany, UK–Argentina, Cambodia–Vietnam, and
Honduras–El Salvador. For USSR–West Germany, Egypt–Israel, and Poland–West Germany, all four
Kohama et al. 437

attributes existed and achieved improved relations. The India–China case lacked irrevocability, but the
remaining three attributes existed, and it also achieved improved relations. In the China–Vietnam dyad,
both novelty and irrevocability were lacking but costliness and voluntariness existed and the bilateral rela-
tionship improved. For UK–Argentina, Cambodia–Vietnam, and Honduras–El Salvador, Long and
Brecke (2003) found that only one attribute (voluntariness in the UK–Argentina case) existed; they con-
firmed that there was no substantial improvement in these three cases.
4. Ideally, the cost of an apology and the amount of reparation may not be identical; for instance, some may
argue that apologies accompanied by a large amount of reparation are more likely to be accepted because
they provide benefits to the victims in addition to signaling the perpetrator country’s sincerity. However, in
line with the above-mentioned studies on intergroup apology, this particular study assumes that reparation
mainly works as a costly signal. We thank one of referees for pointing this out and note that it is important
that future research examines these two concepts in the context of international relations.
5. The experimental design was screened and approved by the institutional review board of Waseda
University [ID: 2018-248]. The experimental design and the analysis plan were registered at the Open
Science Framework (https://osf.io/jngub) before data collection started.
6. We expect that if a certain apology factor has no effect on the likelihood of apologies to be accepted in the
Japan–US context, the factor would not affect people’s perception in the context involving more hostile
dyads. Having said that, this particular study does not completely rule out the possibility that political
apologies between friends and foes are dictated by distinct mechanisms. Exploring the possibility will
be a promising avenue for future research. Using a real-world context in experiments, as this study did,
will provide fruitful implications for such research.
7. Sample demographics were not markedly different from the composition of the Japanese population. The
gender ratio was roughly 50:50, compared with the 51% female population share recorded in the 2015
census. Conversely, our sample slightly under-represented youths in their twenties, whose population
share was 15% in the 2015 census, and over-represented college graduates. Moreover, compared with
the 2016 poll conducted by the University of Tokyo and the Asahi Shimbun, our sample included
more conservative people than their representative sample (15%). Data sources: 2015 Census (Statistics
Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications), http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2015/
kekka.htm (accessed on May 13, 2020); School Basic Survey (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology), http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/chousa01/kihon/1267995.htm (accessed
on May 13, 2020); and the UTokyo–Asahi Survey (Masaki Taniguchi of the Graduate Schools for Law
and Politics, the University of Tokyo and the Asahi Shimbun), http://www.masaki.j.u-tokyo.ac.jp/utas/
utasindex.html (accessed on May 14, 2020).
8. One may question if people consider that Trump is able to credibly express sincerity and contrition. Although
we briefly discuss this issue in the Discussion, our experiments do not directly address this problem. It will be
a fruitful avenue for future research to investigate how the leader’s credibility matters in political apology.
9. The timing of our experiment happened to coincide with the first wave of COVID-19. We admit that this
special factor might somehow influence respondents’ answers.
10. For a sample image of the conjoint setting, see Appendix D.
11. Regarding the possibility that people’s demand for apology determines their preferences on apology attri-
butes, see the Discussion and Appendix C.
12. The average marginal component-specific effects were calculated using the estimator and the Cjoint
package developed by Hainmueller et al. (2014).
13. The key findings remain consistent when analysis is run with pooling all five issues. The corresponding
results are reported in Appendix E.
14. Since the scenarios are sufficiently different from each other, we must be cautious in concluding why
certain factors have larger or smaller effects in some scenarios than others. Our analyses here are reflecting
our best interpretation. However, we must note that those interpretations are not conclusive. Further
experimental studies scrutinizing these interpretations will give us definitive answers.
15. The “Taboo trade-offs” argument by Fiske and Tetlock (1997) may explain why the offer of monetary
compensation for damaging sacred values could backfire.
438 Conflict Management and Peace Science 40(4)

16. This result is, in fact, consistent with the authors’ ongoing study using a vignette experiment.
17. Although we asked respondents to report their feelings toward President Trump, we did not use that vari-
able here because it was highly negatively skewed and only a small fraction of our sample had somewhat
positive feelings toward him.
18. The corresponding results are reported in Appendix B.
19. The corresponding results are reported in Appendix A.
20. We focused on these scenarios because the respondents disagreed over whether the president should
apologize. For the other scenarios, they generally agreed that the president’s apology was necessary.
21. The corresponding results are reported in Appendix C.

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