@article{Blue_2015, place={Washington DC: American Sociological Association.}, title={Students’ Accounts for Drinking and Driving: Applying Excuses and Justifications to Explain Behaviors}, url={https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/students-accounts-for-drinking-and-driving}, abstractNote={This classroom activity is designed to define and apply Scott & Lyman’s (1968) typology of accounts. Accounts are linguistic tools social actors use to explain their actions when their behavior is deemed unexpected and inappropriate. In other words, accounts are how people rationalize their behavior when it is called in question. Individuals try to relieve themselves of responsibility by two specific types of accounts—excuses and justifications. Scully & Marolla (1984) draw on Scott & Lyman’s (1968) typology of excuses and justification in their study on convicted rapists. Students that read the various types of excuses and justifications rapists use often reject their accounts. Thus, it is important for students to apply accounts in situations that will have most often relate to them or someone that they know. One such situation involves drinking and driving. After going over the main points in both the Scott & Lyman’s (1968) and Scully & Marolla (1984) pieces, students are broken into groups of 4-5 and are asked to offer various explanations as to why they or someone they knew were drinking and driving. Activity steps are given and discussed in detail below. }, journal={TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology}, author={Blue, Courtney}, year={2015}, month={Mar.} }