For example, in one experiment, undergraduate students were told they were participating in an online group discussion with three other students, plus an experimenter posing to them a series of questions ranging from politics to adjustment to college. Risen and Gilovich write that, “the experimenter told participants that productive discussions are open, honest and insightful and that while discussing mildly sensitive topics, they should try to make comments that facilitate a productive discussion.” At least, that’s what the students thought was happening while sitting alone in their lab cubicles. In reality, there were only two other people online—the experimenter, who also assumed the roles of two sham participants (the “harmdoer” and the “coercer” in the coerced apology condition), and one other real participant who served as the “onlooker” to the social offense event. This main event was scheduled to occur when the fourth question was posed to the target participant.
This fourth question was written to encourage participants to simply respond “no.” The experimenter asked the target student, “Do you think that the United States is doing everything it possibly can to provide equal rights for its gay citizens? Yes or no?” (Seven of forty-nine participants said “yes” and were excluded from the final analysis.) After the target student said “no,” the experimenter delivered the social offense in the role of the “harmdoer” by saying, “you should just go move to Australia or Canada or something--this discussion thing would be more productive if you quit being such an ungrateful baby.... realized that you’re lucky to live here, and stopped focusing only on the negative.”
Although all participants were exposed to this social offense, either as the target or the observer, they were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the spontaneous condition, the “harmdoer” immediately wrote an apology: “You know what—that was too harsh. I’m sorry.” In the coerced condition, the experimenter wrote as the “coercer”: “I can’t believe you said that. That was totally uncalled for. You need to apologize.” The “harmdoer” then wrote an apology identical to the one in the spontaneous condition. Finally, for those in the no apology condition, the discussion continued without the “harmdoer” apologizing. For all conditions, three additional questions were posed without incident before the discussion came to an end and participants were asked to evaluate the other players on a number of dimensions.
The results from these ratings revealed that although the targets “forgave” both the spontaneous apologist and the coerced apologist in equal measure, the observers did so only for the spontaneous apologist. In other words, the targets found both apologists equally likable, selfish, kind, arrogant, rude and compassionate, whereas the observers expressed a clear disdain for the one who apologized only after being coerced into it. Furthermore, while observers said they wanted nothing else to do with the coerced apologist, targets said they wouldn’t mind working with this person again. Observers also recommended that the coerced apologist receive less payment for their participation on the task than they did for the spontaneous apologists, whereas the targets felt that the two types of apologists deserved equal amounts. Why this difference between the targets and observers in their forgiveness of the coerced harmdoer? Risen and Gilovich argue that whereas offended parties are motivated to appear forgiving rather than spiteful, observers (as neutral parties) are expected to be fair and discerning of others’ intentions. As for the non-apologist, as you might expect, this person was disliked most of all—both the targets and observers expressed more anger towards this player than they did for either type of apologist.
However, there’s an important caveat to this finding that even insincere apologies are better than no apology when it comes to recovering precious dividends from one’s sinking relational value. In another experiment, Risen and Gilovich found that when the responsibility for harmdoing is ambiguous, offering a coerced apology can backfire, with observers evaluating the apologist less favorably than someone who offers no apology at all. In this other experiment, participants were told that they’d be competing in a game of “communication skills” against other players. Each undergraduate participant sat back-to-back with another player (actually a confederate of the experimenters) as this other person put a set of K’nex toy pieces together and gave directions to the target about how to put an identical set of pieces together in the same way. The target was instructed to follow these directions without asking questions or making any comments. For each matching piece during this 5-minute game, the pair earned money (25 cents). Another participant (the observer) simply watched on as this was happening, silently judging.
Like the previous experiment, a seemingly unscripted social offense was inserted into the procedure. Here, the confederate player began by giving unclear instructions, answered his cell phone in the middle of the game, chatting idly for 1.5 minutes (“What?.... No?.... I can’t believe he did that… Really?”), then hung up and continued giving confusing instructions to the target. Against the backdrop of this laboratory ruse, participants were in fact randomly assigned to one of three different apology conditions. In the spontaneous condition, the “harmdoer” turned to the target and said, “I’m sorry, I really screwed that up for you.” In the coerced condition, the harmdoer apologized only after a confederate observer castigated the harmdoer, “That was terrible. I can’t believe you took a phone call. You totally ruined it for him [or her]. You really need to apologize.” Finally, in the no apology condition, the harmdoer just sighed and began counting the number of completed pieces.
As in the foregoing experiment, targets forgave both of the apologists equally but expressed lingering anger towards the player who didn’t apologize at all. For the silent observers, however, the person who offered a coerced apology was judged even more harshly than the one who offered no apology at all. Risen and Gilovich point out that this intriguing finding “is consistent with findings from the legal arena, which suggest that apologies may only benefit harmdoers if their responsibility for the harm is clear. When the responsibility is clear, apologies increase the chance of plaintiffs and defendants reaching a settlement. If responsibility is ambiguous, however, apologies can be costly to the defendant because of the admission of responsibility.” The authors suggest that, in the present case, observers may have actually given the harmdoer the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the phone call was indeed an emergency, or maybe some observers blamed the participant for not being able to follow muddled instructions on the puzzle game—until the harmdoer apologized.
And speaking of apologies that are better left unsaid, I may have recently offered one or two myself.
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12 Comments
Add CommentI disagree that self esteem comes totally from what others say.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not care if you ostracize me or even exclude me from your hallowed pages for saying so.
Well, Jesse made a good summary of the work of Risen and Gilovich. No apologies there. So far so good. But how much is he justified in designing a (presumably) measurable index called self-esteem? That may serve as a good psychobabble. But it make sense when neuroscience tells that 'self' itself is a phantom? There is no solid little man sitting there as self to be bother about 'esteem'. Risen and Gilovich work shows the resultant effect of various social forces acting and adjusting in a specific environmental situation. The resultant helps in realigning the body-organism to adjust to the emerging situation for its own survival. So it is another phantom. Where is self-esteem?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswell said, jesse. thanks for keeping it real! Your sorry animal account dove tails nicely with that irrepressible urge for people to punish other people even if it costs them or causes their own suffering. BTW, perhaps someone should tell some of your readers that self-esteem is a construct that allows researchers to operationalize subjectively experienced feelings of self-worth, both global self-worth and domain-specific self-worth (an example of domain-specfic would be "me as a scientist"). I believe the point being made is t hat when people are excluded socially, according to the sociometer hypothesis, their self-worth plummets which then motivates them to do something. that something could be to change their behavior ("i won't make grammatical errors anymore") or change their attitudes ("it would ruin my expressiveness if I used proper grammar when i post blogs"). some might even apologize for being assess (not in the sense of Kim Kardashian but in the sense of acting jerky). All of this talk makes me think: WWFD? what would (chain-smoking) Festinger do? Probably light another cigarette while waiting for some attitude adjustment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyup yup yup! precisely! i lost respect for you [not a lot, don't worry] immediately when you bowed to the [hahaha] social aggression of a [how many 'ha's can i put in here and still seem halfway serious?] clique of women, who, since they occupied the anonymous position, were basically trying to trash your reputation in a web age version of behind your back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is great stuff-- the ideas you are talking about are actually playing themselves out in the very presentation and reception of the ideas. i propose you planned that al along. now neither confirm nor deny that so i can regain that little bit of lost respect.
Hm, I'm curious to know how stable the feelings of the "onlooker" are about the "harmdoer" over time especially when witness to continued amicable transactions between the "harmdoer" and 'victim.' Do the "onlooker"s negative evaluations temper with time? If so, how soon?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSupposing, there's an added energy cost to harboring negative emotions about the "harmdoer," I wonder specifically how the negative feelings diminish over time-- and that if it's possible eventually to simply hold the semantic memory of the "harmdoer" being a poor partner without the emotionality.
I also wonder how context specific these evaluations are. If you run this experiment, then put the participants and plants into a novel situation. Do the previous evaluations carry over? If so, how much? How different can we make the new context before the old evaluations don't matter (if possible)?
What about people that apologize for others' bad behavior? How does that play into evaluations?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike, "Don't mind Jeff. He just says things like that sometimes. He don't mean any harm."
That's often because Jeff is a friend of that person and their association with them may reflect badly upon them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn apology is a prelude to redemption. One does not redeem themselves with with an apology only as was offered by this so called test. With such a vital piece of the equation missing the results are not surprising.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article does illuminate how poorly apologies are understood and why "sorry" is so abused when people are in limited contact with others when there is little time for one to redeem themselves. I.E., Step on a persons foot in a long line and say "I'm sorry". Then do the same thing but this time offer with the apology an act of redemption, "would you like a bottle of water?" There are other factors I am overlooking here as well, witch is why I hate articles such as this. "" 'U' ""
The purpose of an apology is to let others who expected your cooperation know that you realize you violated the rules through which mutual trust operated in that group, and that you wanted a chance to show in the future that you could indeed be relied upon to obey those rules. Someone referred to self-esteem and that is certainly involved, as you tend to realize that if you cause others not to trust you, you can't really trust yourself to act effectively within that group in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article doesn't really make t clear that an apology that also doubles as an admission is not strictly speaking an apology. If the prospect of punishment were involved, it would or at least could be more of a plea for mercy, and not for renewal of trust.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with some of these experiments is that if the hypothesis is wrong, the testers will often conclude it was wrong for the wrong reasons. The ones involved here owe someone an apology.
please remove most objectionable visually and psychologically photo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisat least replace as corrupt.
The study seems only a baby step in the direction of understanding an apologies influence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIgnoring the current social status of the offender; seems to be a roadblock to conclusion.
I would guess there is a different interpretation when the group leader (Alpha-Male) is the offender than when it's a lower status offender.
When a group of people reach a certain size the group dynamics change drastically, at 12-13 people the group starts to fracture.