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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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After a fight and before forgiveness often comes an apology. But saying “I’m sorry” comes more easily for some people than it does for others. A new study suggests that specific personality traits offer clues about whether a person is likely to offer a mea culpa.
Psychologist Andrew Howell and his colleagues at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton devised a questionnaire to measure a person’s willingness to beg someone’s pardon. They asked participants to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements, such as “My continued anger often gets in the way of me apologizing” or “If I think no one will know what I have done, I am likely not to apologize.” The researchers then used the answers to determine every participant’s “proclivity to apologize,” and they cross-referenced these scores with results from a variety of personality assessments.
From the beginning, Howell was confident that people with high marks for compassion and agreeability would be willing apologizers—and the study results confirmed his hypothesis. But the experiment also turned up some surprising traits of the unrepentant.
People with low self-esteem, for example, were less inclined to apologize, even though they probably feel bad after a conflict. Unlike people who experience guilt about a specific action and feel sorry for the person they have wronged, individuals who experience generalized shame may actually be feeling sorry for themselves.
In contrast, “people who are sure of themselves have the capacity to confess to wrongdoing and address it,” Howell suggests. But just the right amount of self-esteem is key. The study also found that narcissists—people who, in Howell’s words, “are very egocentric, with an overly grand view of themselves”—were reluctant to offer an apology.
The researchers were most surprised to find that a strong sense of justice was negatively correlated with a willingness to apologize, perhaps suggesting that contrition and an “eye for an eye” philosophy are incompatible. Reconciliation may end a conflict, but it cannot always settle a score.
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5 Comments
Add CommentApparently Canadians have high self esteem and are not narcissists. Eh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPardon me Mr Payne but ... would you care to explain your remark. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSteve, Canadians are very apologetic. The joke is that if you step on a Canadian's toe, he will apologize to you. This is a cultural thing, so that I don't think this study says anything about Canadians. In particular, this is almost reflexive (like a 'bless you' when someone sneezes), so the apology may not be all that sincere. I guess the moderately confident and compassionate Canadians are even likelier to apologize and likelier to be sincere in doing so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou wrote: "A new study suggests that specific personality traits offer clues about whether a person is likely to offer a mea culpa."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Personality traits' are only one of numerous aspects of our humanity that are involved. National and local cultures have an influence that may far exceed or even contradict the findings about 'personal' personality issues. For example, in England, 'Sorry! is often used in the same manner as an American might say, "Excuse me", even before a 'wrong' is committed. It is simply a social grace to preclude the taking of offense or to simply acknowledge the presence of another while asking for a bit of forbearance in an interaction with acquaintance or stranger alike.
On the other hand, New Yorkers are generally [not all] so rude that they often will not apologize no matter how egregious the offense, while natives of the southern, mid-western, and western states are most likely to be kind and apologetic to the extent that a New Yorker would not recognize what they referred to!!! While New Yorkers are the worst in this regard, it also applies to the 'citified' urban areas of the northeast morass, and similar environments everywhere.
Anonymity and congestion in urban areas seem to breed contempt for the rights and sensibilities of others - like rats in a maze. Those who live there usually cannot notice it or refuse to accept it matters. Their concept of 'civil' ization is a totally warped one.
I'm confident the number of circumstances where a person offers 'I'm sorry' are as numerous as there are cultures in the world, and probably lots more.
The present study [and I only know what your piece offered] is so shallow and absent context and study parameters that it should not be published as you did - it gives a bad name to real science and rational, informed discourse.
Please stop the 'sound bite' nature of such 'pop' science reporting and leave them to 'People' magazine or better, the cheap tabloids who don't expect to be read by a thinking audience.
"The researchers were most surprised to find that a strong sense of justice was negatively correlated with a willingness to apologize, perhaps suggesting that contrition and an “eye for an eye” philosophy are incompatible. Reconciliation may end a conflict, but it cannot always settle a score."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this depends greatly on the nature of the "sense of justice". I certainly have "a strong sense of justice", but it is based on gaining or giving restitution rather than punishment or "settl[ing] a score", and I apologize very easily regarding anything to which I may be even somewhat at fault. But perhaps the last is also related to my Canadian/English upbringing even though I am now 73.