Supplementary material for: Between applause and arm crossing: Public reception of within-group apologies and the role of system justification

Within-group apologies restore important values and afford victims their dignity; however, the system justification motive may cause group authorities to hesitate in apologizing or to include system-justifying expressions to soothe the general public. Two studies are conducted, both on-campus (Study 1) and off-campus (Study 2), to empirically illustrate the public reception of within-group apologies (victim-focused and system-challenging apology) and silence. The results indicate that higher levels of system justification correlate with more favorable attitudes toward responses from authority. For the general public (Study 2), high-level justifiers supported the government's silence while maintaining trust despite perceiving unfairness. The average majority favored the government's apology over silence, with low-level justifiers remaining negative regardless. Additionally, the general public in Study 2 favored the victim-focused apology over the system-challenging one, rendering system-justifying expressions unnecessary. We propose that authorities focus on the average majority, considering the potential ineffectiveness of apologies for those with low levels of system justification.