Kim Mills: “I'm sorry.” Those may be some of the simplest and yet most powerful words in the English language, with the potentially heal relationships, soothe hurt feelings and even begin to right historical wrongs. But they're not always easy to say, or to say sincerely. Most of us know the feeling of an apology sticking in our throat, even when we realize how much the person or people whom we've hurt would like to hear it.
So why are apologies so important in relationships and why is it often hard to apologize? What makes for a good, effective apology and what makes for a bad one? Are some apologies so bad that they're worse than no apology at all? Why do some people find it easier to apologize than others? And what about when you're the victim rather than the offender? If someone wants to apologize to you but you're not ready to forgive them, what do you do? Also, is there any truth to the stereotype that women apologize more than men do? And finally, what about apologies in the public sphere? What's the difference between public and private apologies? Is there a role for institutional and government apologies in addressing historical injustice and atrocities?
Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Karina Schumann, an associate professor of psychology and chair of the social psychology program at the University of Pittsburgh. She studies conflict resolution, apologies and forgiveness, including the interrelated psychological experiences of harming others and being harmed by others. Her work addresses many of the questions I just posed about how people respond to each other in conflicts and how those responses affect their relationships and their wellbeing.
Thank you for joining me today, Dr. Schumann.
Karina Schumann, PhD: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Mills: On your lab's website, you write that, “One of the unfortunate certainties of life is that we sometimes hurt people we care about, and they sometimes hurt us.” When people do inevitably hurt each other, how important are apologies to healing those rifts? What role do apologies play in our relationships?
Schumann: They're incredibly important. Apologies really can be thought of as the super glue of life in a way. I've heard that quote before. They really go a long way to show concern, to show that you care about the relationship, about the person, that you want to make things right. And they're not always perfect, as you said in your introduction. Some apologies are lacking quite a bit. But if they're given from the heart and if they're really genuine and sincere in the way they're offered and in their intention, even if the words aren't perfect, they can go a really long way to showing the person that you care about them, and that you want to make amends and repair the relationship to what it was before the harm was done.
And so for that reason, apologies are one of the most powerful tools that people can use in their lives to smooth over their relationships, whether it's for a small little insult, or joke that was unintentionally harmful, or for something really major and severe that can destroy a relationship. Apologies have been known to be really, really powerful in terms of repairing the relationship, helping people get on track, and really being the start of a longer process of reconciliation for some of those more severe offenses. And so in the research that we do, we show that apologies are incredibly effective, especially to the extent that they are sincere and perceived as sincere by the victim or the person on the receiving end. And that they do a lot to promote forgiveness, to create healing in the relationship, and to reduce anger and revenge motivation in the victim.
Mills: So what makes for an effective apology? Is there essentially a formula for a really good apology?
Schumann: No formula, I'd say. It's going to depend quite a bit on the situation, your relationship with the other person, the offense that was committed, how severe it was. I would say the absolutely most important thing to remember when apologizing is to try to be authentic and sincere in the way you're offering it and in what you're communicating to the other person. There are certainly key components of an apology that the person who was harmed will look for and will want to hear. Things like those two very important words, “I'm sorry” or “I apologize,” are a really strong signal that you are apologizing. Sometimes people will think they've apologized by saying something like, “Oops, shouldn't have done that.” And the other person's like, “Well, that's not an apology,” because they haven't heard those keywords that they really associate with an apology and an expression of remorse. So you want to send that very clear signal.
Other things that are really important are some sort of acceptance of responsibility or accountability for the offense. Victims really want to hear that you are accepting some of the blame for what happened, taking responsibility for the offense, and that signals to them that you know what you did was offensive and that you're willing to accept some of that blame. And that takes some of the blame away from the victim as well. Because sometimes it can be an ambiguous situation, and by accepting responsibility, it disambiguates that.
An acknowledgement of harm is something that I think is really underused. People tend to forget to empathize with the other person and say, “Wow, I see how this has affected you. These are the ways in which you're suffering because of what I've done or because of the way you've been inconvenienced by this.” And that validation is really important for the person to hear that you understand that this is how they've been harmed and that you see the consequences of your actions for them. And that's something that when we code people's apologies in our research, it doesn't show up as often as you think or as you would expect given how much we probably want to hear that when we're on the receiving end of an apology. But for some reason we neglect to include that in our apologies. About 85% to 90% of the apologies that I code don't include that. And I think it's a really critical component. I can go one with other elements if you want, or you can jump in.
Mills: No, I just wanted to ask what makes a bad apology? Because I can think of a lot of instances when people have made public apologies, particularly politicians, and they'll say, “Well, if you were offended, I'm sorry,” which sort of puts it on the recipient of whatever the offense was, instead of “I did a bad thing.” It's really your fault because you were upset by what I said.
Schumann: Yes. That is a common apology that we hear. And it's tempting. You want to say, “If something happens that you're hurt by then I'm sorry for that.” And it kind of removes that requirement of taking responsibility. You're not saying, I did this and this was wrong. You're saying I'm expressing remorse, I'm expressing some sympathy for what this person is going through, but I'm not going so far as to take accountability for it. And people do not like to receive apologies like that. That specific way of saying, if something happened, then I'm sorry. That's the worst case scenario because you're really not even aware it seems of what was wrong. You're not acknowledging how the person was harmed. You're not accepting responsibility. So it's really showing that you're not in tune with that person and there really isn't a strong sense of empathy or concern that comes across because you're not even aware of what you've done that was harmful.
And then the other version that that comes in is, “I'm sorry that this hurt you.” Or “I'm sorry that you were offended by this.” And again, that is push—it's shifting the blame onto the victim in a way by saying, you're sensitive and you were hurt by this. It's not because of what I did that was wrong. It's because of your reaction to it. And again, that doesn't really sit well with the person on the receiving end who really wants to hear, “I recognize that what I did was wrong and I put you in this position of being on the receiving end of this harmful behavior. And that was wrong of me.” And so this can be tricky, especially when someone wants to smooth things over, but they really don't feel like they're responsible. How do you express remorse and empathize and offer that apology without inauthentically taking responsibility?
So I think a good thing in those kinds of situations is to really try to put yourself in a position to empathize with the person and what they're going through. So you might ask them, “I'd really like to learn from the situation and why this was hurtful to you. Can you explain to me what you're feeling so that I can better understand?” And maybe by seeking that perspective and asking for that information, you might have a better sense of what their experience was like. And that might help you understand the situation better from their vantage point, which might then allow you to authentically take responsibility for your actions a little bit better.
Mills: A lot of people find it difficult to apologize even when they know how much it would mean to the other person. What are the barriers? What are the psychological barriers that keep people from apologizing?
Schumann: There's a few. Yeah. So the foremost barrier is when we morally disengage from our actions. So this is the situation where it's like, “Well, I didn't do anything wrong. I shouldn't apologize. Why should I take responsibility for this? There's nothing that I did here that deserves an apology.” And this is a very common response that we have when we've done something wrong, this does not feel good to us, we want to push away blame from ourselves. And we can do this in a variety of ways. We blame the other person, we blame the situation, we think about all the extenuating circumstances that affects our behavior, or we minimize the consequences of the actions that we took for that other person. And all of those ways of morally disengaging allows us to say, “Well, there's nothing that needs to be corrected here. I'm in the right.” That tendency to justify our actions, that sort of comes first. And often, if that's the case, then we really won't feel an apology is necessary and therefore won't apologize.
But even when we do recognize that we've done something wrong and that an apology might be warranted in the situation, there are barriers in those situations as well. One barrier is when we don't really care enough about the other person or the relationship to put ourselves out there on that limb to make ourselves vulnerable through an apology, to go that extra mile to repair the relationship. This can sometimes with acquaintance, a stranger, a colleague. We don't really care to fix that relationship or we're having a hard time empathizing with that person, even if it's someone we do care about. And so for example, my research shows that as empathy fluctuates in your romantic relationships for various offenses, you become more or less likely to apologize. When you empathize a lot with your partner, you offer them an apology in that situation. When you're less likely to empathize with them in that situation, you're less likely to apologize. So that's a lack of concern as a barrier.
A second barrier is when you really feel like apologizing would be threatening to yourself. Now, we all have this very strong motivation to feel good about ourselves, to feel that we're good people, we're moral people. And so even when we have recognized that we've done something potentially wrong here, we have a desire to not associate ourselves with that wrongdoing. And apologizing explicitly does that. So when you apologize, you're explicitly associating yourself with some sort of inappropriate, immoral, incompetent behavior. And that does not feel good for ourselves. And so especially in anticipation of apologizing, we think, “Oh, I don't want to do this. This is uncomfortable. This makes me feel vulnerable. This makes me feel like a bad person to connect myself or to recognize that my actions were wrong.” And so we might do other things like justify our actions or minimize the harmfulness of our actions. And that feels really good in the moment, but it does not go very far towards reconciling the relationship.
And then another barrier that comes into play is pretty simple. We just don't think apologies will be beneficial. Maybe we don't think that person will forgive us, or we think that the offense was too severe for an apology to be really beneficial. And so we might not feel that it's worth the effort to put ourselves out there because we don't think it will have an impact. And there's research by some other great researchers, Leunissen and colleagues, that shows that people have a tendency to overestimate the negative consequences of apologizing and underestimate the benefits of apologizing. But once we've actually apologized, we feel so much better, the other person feels better and it can really have a positive impact.
Mills: Well, talking about the other person, we've been talking more about the person who apologizes, but what if you are the victim of the transgression? What do you do if somebody apologizes to you but you're not really ready to forgive them?
Schumann: I think this is really important because we have such a strong social script, such a strong link in our society between apologies and forgiveness. And part of that is because apologies do often lead to forgiveness, they really help the forgiveness process. But I suppose the downside of that really strong link is that victims might often feel pressured to forgive before they're ready. And the apologizer or the transgressor in the situation might put expectations on the victim to forgive them once they've apologized. And I think this can add more insult to injury, this can create unhealthy expectations for the victim to forgive, both self-expectations and expectations from the transgressor before a process of true reconciliation has been allowed to happen.
And so transgressors, my advice is always for transgressors to apologize without this contingency of an expectation of forgiveness. You're apologizing because you know it's the right thing to do, because you care about the other person, because you want to help the relationship. Not because you want to just get them to forgive you. It can't be used as a manipulation tactic like that. And you have to give the victim space to forgive. You have to give them space and time and maybe that forgiveness will never come depending on how severe this offense is, and how damaged the relationship is. And that's okay. That can't be expected.
And then from the person on the receiving end of the apology, it's really important to allow yourself that space and time to heal, and to go, and to expect more and have the candid conversation with the apologizer, the transgressor, about what you need to properly reconcile because an apology might not be enough. I like to think of apologies as a really important starting point on the path of reconciliation, especially for more harmful offenses where they signal concern, they signal accountability, they signal a commitment to doing better, and wanting to change and wanting to improve in the relationship. But that apology has to be followed by actions that demonstrate that commitment to improvement and change.
And so I'm thinking about obviously more severe offenses here like infidelity, or a continued pattern of psychological harm in a relationship, or neglecting someone and constantly undermining the relationship, or continued failure to complete your obligations at work, or something along those lines where you need to demonstrate not just an apology, but demonstrate that you really care about that person through behavioral change as well. And so for the victim who receives an apology who isn't ready to forgive, you can say that. You can say, “I'm not quite ready yet. I need more time.” Or “I need you to do this and show me that you're really care about me by changing your behavior. I thank you for your apology. I appreciate the effort. I know apologies aren't easy and I appreciate this as a starting point, but here's what I need for us to move forward.” And so just having that open, constructive communication, I think can be really healthy in a relationship, and allow the victim to feel like they have the agency over their own healing without feeling this unnecessary pressure, which can actually create more harm for them.
Mills: And it sounds like not shutting down the person who is trying to apologize, keeping the door open to considering this.
Schumann: Definitely. Yeah, I think that's really important. And that's where that communication comes in, because if the person apologizes and you just continue to be unresponsive and you don't even acknowledge it, then that can really make them feel like their efforts aren't being acknowledged. And they might throw their hands up in the air and say, “Well, why bother?" And that might really inhibit them from engaging in those actions that you want to see, those positive changes that you're hoping for because they think, “Well, they're already out the door. They don't care about this relationship. They're not committed to me either because they're not willing to forgive me.”
And so that's where that constructive communication comes in to say, “Look, let's work on this together. I'm not ready, but I can see a future”—Or “This is what I need to potentially get there and I might not ever get there, but this is what I at least am feeling right now, and I want us to potentially collaborate on this together.” And like you said, that leaves that door open and they can really create a willingness from the transgressor's side as well to work with the victim to try to improve things.
Mills: These days, we have so many media available to us to use to communicate, and I'm wondering if people find it easier to apologize in writing rather than in person? What about apologizing via text? Are these kinds of apologies as effective as an in-person apology or as meaningful?
Schumann: There's not a lot of research on this, and I had started doing some research on this with an honors student. We didn't have clear answers emerge and to be fair, we didn't run too many studies on this, but I think the answer right now is we don't know. There isn't a ton of research on it, but what we do know very, very clearly from decades of research on apologies, is that sincerity matters the most. And so if your typical way of communicating with someone is text messaging, and that seems totally normal for you two to communicate that way even about important things, then if you're sincere in the words you use and you put in a lot of augmenters. “I'm so sorry, I really, really want to express how genuinely remorseful I am” and those kinds of things, and you communicate that emotion through text and that's normal for your relationship, then I don't see why it wouldn't be effective.
I think where the medium that you're using might matter is where you're used to seeing this person all the time face to face, you rarely communicate important things by email or text, and then all of a sudden they're getting this text out of the blue, which might feel like either you're not brave enough to face them or you don't care enough to put in the effort. And so I would say stick to what feels comfortable for your relationship and normal for your relationship. But most of all, think about how can I convey sincerity and concern in this apology?
Mills: I mentioned in my introduction that there's a stereotype that women apologize more than men do. And I know you've done research in this area. Can you tell our listeners what you have found? Is that stereotype true?
Schumann: Yes and no. So yeah, when I started studying apologies way back in grad school, I came across this stereotype often: Women apologize all the time. Men apologize for nothing. Women apologize reflexively, and without even giving it a second thought and are over-apologizers. And men are unwilling to ever take responsibility, their egos don't allow them to admit wrong, all this kind of stuff.
So I wanted to see if this was true, because there really wasn't a lot of empirical research to back up those stereotypes. And what I found across numerous studies was that women did apologize more frequently in their daily life. So when we tracked their apology behavior with diary studies, we did see a higher frequency, but we also saw a higher frequency of offenses reported. And what that means is when we looked at the proportion of offenses that they were apologizing for, it was identical to men's proportion of offenses that they were apologizing for. And we also saw this from the victim's perspective.
So when we asked them to report things that they had been offended by and had received an apology for, we saw a similar pattern where women were reporting more offenses on the receiving end than men were reporting as victims. And so this made us think, is there a difference in perceptions of severity here where men are less likely to see an offense as occurring or less likely to see behaviors as warranting an apology because they just don't see it as bothersome as women see it.
And so we tested this in a bunch of follow up studies with more controlled methods where we gave men and women the exact same offenses, and we had them rate how severe they were, and how much an apology was deserved and how likely they were to apologize. And what we saw consistently study after study was that men and women saw the identical offenses differently. So women rated them as more severe, more deserving of an apology, and therefore rated themselves as more likely to apologize. So what does this all mean? What it means is that yes, women do apologize more frequently than men in their daily lives. Although I will say that this difference is much smaller than the stereotype suggest. So this is not, Men are from Mars—what is it? Women are from—
Mills: Women are from Venus.
Schumann: Women are from Venus and men are from Mars. This is not two bipolar behaviors here where they're completely on the opposite ends of the spectrum. These are small differences in frequency where women are slightly more likely to apologize in their daily lives. And the reason why this difference is emerging, at least in part, is because women are seeing these behaviors is more offensive and therefore more deserving of an apology. And when men register a behavior as offensive, they are quite willing, just as willing as women to apologize for it. And our research shows that they apologize in equally high quality ways. So men and women's apologies are actually quite similar in the way they're structured. So it's not that women are falling over themselves offering these really comprehensive, amazing apologies, whereas men are just like, “Sorry about that.” Their apologies are actually quite similar as well. So yeah, the stereotype has some bones to it, but not nearly to the extent that people think that men are really unwilling to apologize.
One thing I will say as a follow up to that is that it really implies that communication is really important, especially in our mixed gender relationships. So women really need to of remember that men might have a different vantage point, a different perception of the behavior that they have, and that they can communicate that they were harmed or they feel hurt by the behavior because that might not have crossed the man's threshold as being offensive, so to speak. And men also have a responsibility to remember that women might be more upset about something than they are. And that's where communication comes in, especially in heterosexual romantic relationships, but across all relationships, of course, this is important to really communicate about how you're feeling, about why you're hurt and without doing it in a blaming or critical way, to try to have a constructive conversation about your emotions and feelings about the situation so that you can bring each other onto the same page.
Mills: Now, you've also looked at differences between conservatives and liberals when it comes to apologizing, which I think is pretty interesting. And can you tell us what you found there?
Schumann: Yeah, so this is work that was led by Dr. Matthew Hornsey. What we found was that liberals are again, slightly more willing to apologize than conservatives are. And they're also slightly more happy to receive an apology, or the apology has a stronger effect on their willingness to forgive than it does for conservatives. There's a few reasons why we think this is the case.
Liberals are also slightly more likely to have a growth mindset of personality. So they're slightly more likely to believe that people can change and therefore apologies might be a stronger signal of that change for them, or that capacity for improvement. And liberals are also less likely to have what we call social dominance orientation or a high social dominance orientation, which is a tendency to be okay with hierarchy and a hierarchical structure between people. And so liberals feel a little bit less comfortable with inequality and feeling like things aren't fair between groups. And that might translate into our conflict situations where an offense can create an inequality between the transgressor and victim. And so apologies sort of can help remedy that, and therefore liberals are potentially slightly more willing to offer those apologies and be happy to receive an apology. It's a little bit of a complicated relationship there, but again, these differences I want to just make sure I convey, they're not extremely huge. These are small differences, but they are consistent.
Mills: And you've also done research that suggests that people who are harder on themselves are less likely to forgive themselves for mistakes and less likely to apologize to others. Can you talk a little bit about that work?
Schumann: Yes. So self-compassion is our tendency to not let ourselves off the hook easily for things, but to give ourself some breathing room and to say I know I make mistakes and I'm human, and that's okay. And what happens is when people are higher in self-compassion, they are less likely to hide from their mistakes or run away from their mistakes in shame. Because they say they're more willing to recognize, I understand I'm not perfect, and I can fix this, and I can grow from this. And so instead of ignoring the problem and hiding in shame and failing to address the problem because of that shame, they're more willing to confront their actions and sort of experience that discomfort that comes with recognizing that you've harmed someone. And sort of sit in that guilt and discomfort a little bit because of that self-compassion that they then have to say, this is okay to have done this and not to have done it, but to recognize that I'm not perfect and that I can grow from this.
So that's what we find, that self-compassion is associated with less shame and therefore more willingness to apologize because you're willing to really kind of address and sit in the discomfort that comes with the recognition that you've harmed someone.
Mills: What about those people who apologize all the time, even when there's really nothing to apologize for? It's sort of like a verbal tick. Are these people viewed differently from people who don't do that? I mean, are they seen as maybe weaker or less competent, or are they seen as maybe being nicer than other people?
Schumann: A little bit of both. So we have a number of studies looking at this, and what we found was that people who have high baselines, high apology baseline, so they apologize very frequently, very often for things, certainly for things that warrant an apology, but also for things that could have gone without an apology. And so what we found is that people with these high apology baselines, they are seen as slightly less competent and more so less assertive. I would say that the association with competency was weak, but they're seen as less assertive and a little bit less powerful. But those correlations were pretty small, and what we found was a much stronger correlation with being seen as very warm, and moral, and relational and caring. And so it seems like being a high baseline apologizer has some slight costs in terms of being seen as less assertive, but some strong benefits in terms of being seen as a warm, caring, moral person.
What we also found really interestingly, and we didn't actually hypothesize this in advance, but what we found is that people who are high baseline apologizers, but who are also seen as offering high quality apologies. So apologies that are sincere, and comprehensive and not defensive. When they have that combination of being a high frequency, but being a good apologizer, they do not have that cost to their assertiveness. They're simply seen as more warm and moral, and it's not associated with a hit to your assertiveness or power. So I would say if you're going to be a high frequency and apologize for everything, just make sure you're apologizing well.
Mills: Now, up until this point, we've talked a lot about interpersonal kind of one-on-one apologies, but what about institutional apologies. I raise this because a lot of organizations, including my organization, APA, have in the past few years begun to take stock of their history and apologize for harm they've caused to other people in the past, especially around issues like race and racism. Do you think that these institutional apologies are effective and really have a role in addressing and correcting historical injustice?
Schumann: I think they certainly have a role. I think they are necessary. I don't think that they in and of themselves can do all of the repair, can do all of the work. As I said before with more severe harms in our interpersonal conflicts, I would like to suggest that they are a starting point. They send a signal, “We care about this. This matters. We are committed to doing better." Without an apology in these situations, it's almost like being complicit and that silence, that unwillingness to acknowledge the harm that's been done, that unwillingness to make that formal step of saying, “This was wrong. We did this, we have learned, and we are going to continue to put in the work to learn.”
Without that, you're not able to send that very clear signal and make that clear commitment. And so I think they absolutely have a place, I think they're really important, but they really have to be a starting point. They have to be a cog in a larger puzzle of commitment to change, and listening, and learning, and making sure that these types of things don't continue to occur. Because it really is a long process, especially when we're talking about issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion, and the history of marginalization that we've seen in all kinds of organizations and governments. So I think we have to have realistic expectations of these apologies. They certainly cannot right the wrongs of the past, but they are an important step in doing so.
Mills: Last question, one that I like to ask a lot of the researchers I talk to: What's next? What are the big questions that you're looking at now?
Schumann: Right now, we are continuing to do work on interpersonal apologies, looking at what are some of the downsides of apologies? Can they make someone less likely to behave morally in the future? So you feel this boost to after you've apologized to your moral self, does that then make you less likely to do the right thing in that relationship moving forward? Or does it make you more likely to behave in a morally consistent manner with them? So that's a really interesting question to us. We're also looking at the role of apologies in the political domain. So we have a lot of political conflict, and in addition to looking at apologies in that space, we've been looking at how to reduce political hostility in this country, which we know is very divided. So how can we create harmony and a willingness to understand and listen and empathize with members of our political outgroups? And what role do apologies have in smoothing over those relationships once there has been an offense committed?
Those kinds of questions. But really apologies, we even came up with some questions in this session that we don't yet know the answers. Are there specific ways to apologize that are really important and that are really effective? And are there relationship types where apologies are most effective or least effective? And all kinds of questions that have yet to be answered. So we're continuing our work in this space. But yeah, it's always exciting. It's something that people can really relate to in their lives, and it's always exciting to learn more about how they can resolve their conflicts and improve their relationships.
Mills: I want to thank you for joining me today, Dr. Schumann. I think you've given our listeners some important advice and some things to think about.
Schumann: Well, thank you so much for having me.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.
Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.
Karina Schumann, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology and chair of the social psychology program at the University of Pittsburgh, where she directs the Conflict Resolution Lab. She studies conflict resolution, apologies, and forgiveness, including the interrelated psychological experiences of harming others and being harmed by others. Her research focuses on identifying factors that help people successfully manage their conflicts and respond to challenging social interactions in prosocial ways.
