Utilising data on a sample of large US firms, I explore the relationship between corporate irresponsibility and reputation penalties. I find that reputation, derived from the assessments of managers and market analysts, is infrequently influenced by observations of corporate irresponsibility and that different ‘types’ of irresponsibility events have different underlying effects on perceptions of the firm. Specifically, my results demonstrate that variance within firms’ prior social responsibility perceptions, celebrity status, history of irresponsibility and financial performance ‘shape’ stakeholder attributions of irresponsibility and the subsequent reputation penalties associated with these. Moreover, the results of my empirical analysis suggest that reputations tend to be more resilient than previously purported by extant literature and that reputational assessments appear to be largely ‘path dependent’, in that stakeholders’ prior assessments of the firm may determine the impact of revelations of corporate irresponsibility