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I’m Sorry

Jill

Study Shocker: Women apologize more than men.

If you think you hear women saying “I’m sorry” more than men, you’re right. Women apologize more often than men do, according to a new study.

But it’s not that men are reluctant to admit wrongdoing, the study shows. It’s just that they have a higher threshold for what they think warrants reparation. When the researchers looked at the number of apologies relative to the number of offenses the participants perceived they had committed, the researchers saw no differences between the genders.

“Men aren’t actively resisting apologizing because they think it will make them appear weak or because they don’t want to take responsibility for their actions,” said study researcher Karina Schumann, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “It seems to be that when they think they’ve done something wrong they do apologize just as frequently as when women think they’ve done something wrong. It’s just that they think they’ve done fewer things wrong.”

So it’s not just that women have a knee-jerk “I’m Sorry” reflex — it’s that men really don’t think they have anything to be sorry for.

40 thoughts on I’m Sorry

  1. Interesting. Actually, I feel like I’m vaguely familiar with this line of research…

    Given the method of data collection, another possible interpretation is that women perceive themselves to be more guilty of offenses because we tend to apologize more. It’s a bit of trickiness in some behavioural research that it’s not always immediately clear which comes first – our behaviour or our explanation for our own behaviour, especially where we are reporting both (and assuredly constructing personal theories as we go, because most people are very meta like that). The second study seems to be an attempt to account for that, but I wonder if it’s sufficient to account for directionality of effect when the other explanation potentially involves long-standing socialized traits, such as reflexive apologizing (I say this as a habitual apologizer), that may have generalized to other attitudes and perceptions.

    Which is not to say that I’m completely disagreeing with the findings – poking at methodologies and interpretations is just something of a professional hazard. Sorry. 😀

  2. “So it’s not just that women have a knee-jerk “I’m Sorry” reflex — it’s that men really don’t think they have anything to be sorry for.”

    I really don’t think that’s what this study concludes. It goes on to say:

    “Men were also less likely to report being victims of wrongdoing. This led the researchers to investigate whether men are just not offended as easily, and less likely to think they’ve done something objectionable.”

    …

    “Women might have a lower threshold for what requires an apology because they are more concerned with the emotional experiences of others and in promoting harmony in their relationships, Schumann speculated.

    Recognizing that men and women may perceive situations differently may help the genders to get along.

    “Neither men nor women are wrong when they disagree about whether or not an offense has occurred or whether or not an apology is desired,” Schumann said. “It’s just that they have different perceptions of an event that has occurred between them.”

    When one partners is angry and feeling victimized, thinking, “How can my partner love me if he isn’t recognizing what he did,” that person should consider that the other partner “might not be seeing the event the same way that they see the event,” she said.

    “So rather than assuming that your partner can read your mind or read your emotions accurately, you need to communicate to the partner what you’re experiencing…and from that communication, hopefully a successful reconciliation process can then occur.””

  3. I believe this. I have asked guys for an apology for something that I think deserves an apology, and they usually look…confused. Like “Oh I didn’t even realize….” And then 9 times out of 10, they give genuine, sincere apologies.

  4. Err, my boyfriend says sorry, I am sure that he doesn’t care whether he is seen as weak or not. In fact that would make him stronger. I just don’t get these kinds of studies. It could possibly have a speck of truth in there, men are told to be big, strong, so they could subconsciously refusing to apologize. Hm, I don’t know.

  5. It’s funny, you know, I’ve been told off by at least a couple of my (female) friends and past partners for apologizing too much. I always assumed it was a Canadian thing (I jest, but only a little — I’m not the only Canadian that habitually apologizes when someone else steps on my foot) but this study is from Waterloo, so I’m guessing it’s Canadian data. Thanks for posting this 🙂

  6. I agree with you, oftentimes men dont ask apology because they think it reduces their masculinity and in a relationship women tend to ask sorry more often than his partner

  7. Heather, I was thinking about it from the other side of things, that women are told again and again that we need to put aside our needs/desires for the good of everyone else so we just apologize and move on. Probably both.

    The guy I’m seeing right now apologizes for just about everything and it’s… a shock?… to hear that coming from a guy.

  8. Vellum: It’s funny, you know, I’ve been told off by at least a couple of my (female) friends and past partners for apologizing too much. I always assumed it was a Canadian thing (I jest, but only a little — I’m not the only Canadian that habitually apologizes when someone else steps on my foot) but this study is from Waterloo, so I’m guessing it’s Canadian data. Thanks for posting this 🙂  

    Ah, but have you ever fought over a parking spot, Canadian-style? (“You take it.” “No, you take it!”) That’s the true test for us.

  9. Jadey:
    Ah, but have you ever fought over a parking spot, Canadian-style? (“You take it.” “No, you take it!”) That’s the true test for us.  

    You think that’s something? Try fighting over the bill at a restaurant! “I’m just going to the bathroom…” Five minutes later, you find out they’ve paid for you. Ever see someone running out of a restaurant with someone waving money at them? 😀

  10. I’ve been told by various male partners not to apologize so much… and then I apologize for apologizing.

    Me and my partner also have very ideas what an apology means as well. For me, it means, “I believe it is unfortunate that your feelings were hurt. My action caused this hurt. I am acknowledging my error in hurting you. This issue is now settled.”

    On the other hand, his apologies mean, “My actions were objectively incorrect. It is incorrect to behave in this manner. It in unfortunate you had to witness my incorrect behavior. This issue is now settled.”

    Meaning, I’ll apologize when I don’t think I’m “wrong” to stop a fight and he’ll keep pressing me on it (he wants me to admit there’s something wrong with me), and he’ll apologize when I don’t think there’s a problem, but refuse to aplogize when he doesn’t think my feelings should have been hurt, because he wasn’t “wrong”.

  11. I always assumed it was a Canadian thing (I jest, but only a little — I’m not the only Canadian that habitually apologizes when someone else steps on my foot) but this study is from Waterloo, so I’m guessing it’s Canadian data. Thanks for posting this 🙂

    I see that all the fricken time in Minnesota, and am also guilty of it. Maybe the whole “Minnesota Nice” thing we keep talking about here is something we got from our Northern neighbors 😉

  12. This is a pet peeve of mine. I find that women are constantly apologizing for no reason and I hate it. Women apologize to me for walking through a door at the same time as me, even if we didn’t bump. I don’t know why. I feel like saying “why are you sorry?” To me an apology should be given after wrongdoing, but sometimes “I’m sorry” feels like a general greeting. (And I, too, live in Canada.)

  13. I apologize a lot, sometimes for things that could not possibly be my fault, I make up some weird and convoluted plot to why someone’s bad feeling is my fault. I get told to stop that a fair amount of the time; i.e. taking the last piece of chicken (after asking if it is okay 20 times) is not something to apologize for when told explicitly that I could, but then someone asks if there is any chicken left. Food things tend to make me more guilty.

    Or apologize for things that require no apology whatsoever and just end up confusing people.

    I also tend to apologize for being upset. Like, I’ve apologized for having panic attacks (which tends to just further things). Should probably stop that.

  14. This reminds me of a study I read somewhere about how the sexes respond to pain. The results were that women see pain as a natural part of life and men view it as punishment.

  15. When my wife was a kid, her father taught her how to play baseball and told her, “You don’t say “sorry” if you miss a catch. Just pick it up and throw it.” She has used this as a tenet of her philosophy of life, and I think it’s awesome!

  16. I keep seeing a promo on NBC for a show — Parenthood, I think — where a guy is telling another guy that the key to their marriage is that he’s constantly apologizing to his wife, and he doesn’t even know why. It just apparently keeps his ball-busting wife from becoming a monster.

    Sigh.

  17. karak: For me, it means, “I believe it is unfortunate that your feelings were hurt. My action caused this hurt. I am acknowledging my error in hurting you. This issue is now settled.”

    On the other hand, his apologies mean, “My actions were objectively incorrect. It is incorrect to behave in this manner. It in unfortunate you had to witness my incorrect behavior. This issue is now settled.”

    This is accurate, I think. I’ve always operated on the the assumption that if my words/actions are correct (and not intended to cause offense), and offense is taken, then the error is not mine. At best, I might offer a “sorry you feel that way” non-apology. Followed by a “Let us never speak of this matter again.”

    1. I wonder how much of this is neurological/biological and how much is cultural.

      Yes, I’m sure that women have a neurological compulsion to say “I’m sorry” constantly. What?

  20. Men don’t think they’ve done anything wrong….but they do think that that women do wrong shit all the time. Rape culture, anyone? Ever had a male troll on a feminist blog? The person they think is wrong is most definitely not them.

  21. I do this. Though I’ve been working on doing it less, I apologize for things that really don’t require it (e.g. when someone bumps into *me*). I think it goes back to the idea that women are imposing on society just by existing and taking up space (children too, unprivileged groups in general really – now I’m wondering if it’s just women who apologize a lot).

    I have, literally, apologized for the space I’m taking up on the bus 🙁

  22. I think there definitely needs to be a distinction between the varied meaning of “Sorry.”

    1) There’s “I’m genuinely sorry that I did something wrongful that caused you distress.” For example an apology that follows after saying something hateful.

    2) There’s “I’m sorry something I did caused you distress regardless of whether I intended to do so.” For example accidentally spilling something on someone.

    3) There’s “I’m sorry something awful happened to you (regardless of whether I had anything to do with it.” For example I’m sorry you’re sick.

    4) There’s “I’m sorry to be an inconvenience.” I.e., the two people going through the door at the same time.

    5) There’s “I’m sorry for breaking some social nicety.” I.e., apologizing for having the hiccups.

    I think its reasonable that USian woman do 4 & 5 more than men. I’m not sure there is much of a difference on 1 & 3. I’m less certain about 2.

  23. I do it a good bit, but that’s part of having an anxiety disorder. When you’re constantly worried about hurting someone’s feelings, usually when you’re not, you can overwhelm people.

    But I know I’m not the typical sample, for sure.

  24. Strange that this comes up now, because I’ve recently been thinking that I apologise too much, where as my boyfriend hardly says it.

    I have to take an active effort to stop apologising for things. For instance, the other night I was apologising because I was sick and we couldn’t have sex (he didn’t ask me to apologise, I just did). Then the next morning I thought ‘wtf? Why did I do that? I was sick, I couldn’t do anything about it.’

    I worry that this slowly creates a weird paradox – the more I apologise, the more things seem like my fault.

  25. The part about how men are less likely to feel that a wrong act was committed against them is interesting to me. It sort of throws out a good chunk of the knee-jerk “men are too privileged to know when they do something wrong” theory out the window.

  26. It sort of throws out a good chunk of the knee-jerk “men are too privileged to know when they do something wrong” theory out the window.

    How so?

    As for the doorway-passing, I agree with the point above that there are various types of “sorry.” I’ll say “sorry” in that sort of situation but I certainly don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. It functions very much as an “excuse me.”

    A more depressing example for me is how girls/women will often preface questions in classes, etc. with “sorry” (I do this too) and I think this is genuinely messed and sad. It’s like the bus example — aw man, am I existing at you again? I’m such an inconvenience!

  27. Kind of on a tangent but this reminds me of something that happened last night in my martial arts class:
    we were divided into small groups by experience/belt level and were being taught by assistant instructors. There were two female orange belts in my group and one male yellow belt (yellow is lower).

    The guy was having a lot of difficulty with one technique and the instructor was getting frustrated with him, like he was doing it wrong on purpose, which he clearly wasn’t. He kept apologizing for getting it wrong and I wanted to smack the instructor. It was weird; hearing a man apologize so profusely made me think “wow, he feels really bad.” I don’t know, I probably would have felt the same if the student had been female, I just don’t usually see men doing that.

    I feel like the apology would have served its intended purpose – to get the instructor to back off a little – more if it had been a woman apologizing. It’s like the “I’m sorry”s coming from a man just made the instructor more mad.

    I wonder if that has anything to do with the observations from the study, that when someone feels defensive, they may try to deal with it by apologizing too much, acting like they think what they did is a lot worse than anyone else thinks, thus forcing the other party to say “no, it’s not that bad!” And maybe people react better to that when it comes from a woman, whereas when a man does it, people think he’s being weak?

  28. To me, the findings of this study seems pretty straightforward; men are less likely to perceive wrong-doing in themselves and others. And the reason seems pretty clear to me to: power. Women are socialized to feel powerless, and therefore are likelier to mediate conflicts or minimize their wrongs by showing contrition. But because all people have a sense of justice, women notice wrongs more and are more bothered when others don’t follow the same standards they hold themselves to. Men are raised to see themselves as more powerful, which means they have less reason to perceive themselves as being hurt by other people’s actions and more incentive not to notice most slights.

  29. Bagelsan: It sort of throws out a good chunk of the knee-jerk “men are too privileged to know when they do something wrong” theory out the window.

    How so?

    Because that point suggests that the issue isn’t that women accurately see all of the wrong things, and men are unwilling (or unable, due to privilege) to see the wrongness of their actions; the findings of the study suggest that men and women simply perceive wrongdoing differently, and judge what is right and wrong differently.

    If men were less likely to feel that they should apologize for something that they would in turn feel that another person should apologize to them for, it would be a different story. But here, the men in question simply do not determine the same things to be worthy of an apology as women do, whether the alleged offense was directed at them, or by them.

    That’s certainly not to say that privilege doesn’t stop men from seeing certain things; just that we don’t have a reason to conclude that about apology-giving from the results of this survey. I’m also certainly not suggesting that women are overly-sensitive or irrational in apparently believing more things to be worthy of an apology. Really, it just seems like a nice stepping stone for determining the real causes of what seem to be continuous stumbling blocks in communication.

  30. The obverse is that women are frequently subtly punished — by both men and women — if they do something that’s perceived by their social circle as “wrong”, but do *not* apologize.

  31. “So it’s not just that women have a knee-jerk “I’m Sorry” reflex — it’s that men really don’t think they have anything to be sorry for.”

    Wow… Is that your general opinion on 3,000,000,000 people on this planet?

  32. “It’s like the bus example — aw man, am I existing at you again? I’m such an inconvenience! ”

    Ths is the premise when people, men and women both, excuse themsleves before asking a stranger for directions. I have only seen this in the US, I am sure people do it in Canada and probably also in the UK. That’s not how you do it in Germany; it sounds weird there. and it sure isn’t how you do it in China. If yuo do and you look white or whatever enough, it’s weird but just gets lumped in with “God, foreigners are SO weird!”
    liekwise people coming to the US remark on how much we all excuse ourselves, and how much we say thank you, even for things these visitors think doesn’t merit a thank you.

    It is clearly gendered within a culture, but I wouldn’t generalize it beyond that.

    t-ster: To me, the findings of this study seems pretty straightforward; men are less likely to perceive wrong-doing in themselves and others. And the reason seems pretty clear to me to: power.

    This sounds dead on, and I think there’s a consequence to this – a woman apologizinbg may be siganling her powerless to a man. Depending on the context that can translate to :

    1) “I’m so frail, and you’re such a big, strong man – protect, provide….for me” and then that can play out as manipulation or flattery or whatever.

    2) “Wow, what a weakling, begging for approval. She doesn’t fit on this team with us.”

  33. I have a question about possible inadvertent triggering:

    Sometimes I tell a person who is saying Sorry (usually as in sorry that not this hugely bad, merely inconvenient, thing is happening), “that’s okay; we all know it’s TOTALLY your fault.” I make it as obvious as possible that I am joking, even explaining that I am joking. Is this triggering people? Should I stop?

    My intent is to break any tension and try to make clear that I am NOT a customer from hell, but that doesn’t excuse everything.

    I am also a person who compulsively apologizes and , yes, I have apologized for apologizing so much.

  34. “So it’s not just that women have a knee-jerk “I’m Sorry” reflex — it’s that men really don’t think they have anything to be sorry for. ”

    I think you left some straw on the floor.

  35. Ohhhh, man, I think about this alot. Saying sorry for no reason is so unconsciously ingrained in me and I have no idea how it happened. As I lay in bed this morning with horrible cramps and apologized to my husband since it’s our only day off together, and he looked at me in kind of a shock, and asked me what the hell I had to be sorry about and said he was going to go get me my heating pad……yeah, I think about this alot.

  36. “It’s just that they have a higher threshold for what they think warrants reparation.”

    So what exactly would be the desired outcome… that women feel they need to apologize less and do so, or that men feel like they have to apologize more and do so?

    Are you saying that over-apologizing is better or worse?

  37. karak: I’ve been told by various male partners not to apologize so much… and then I apologize for apologizing.Me and my partner also have very ideas what an apology means as well. For me, it means, “I believe it is unfortunate that your feelings were hurt. My action caused this hurt. I am acknowledging my error in hurting you. This issue is now settled.”On the other hand, his apologies mean, “My actions were objectively incorrect. It is incorrect to behave in this manner. It in unfortunate you had to witness my incorrect behavior. This issue is now settled.”Meaning, I’ll apologize when I don’t think I’m “wrong” to stop a fight and he’ll keep pressing me on it (he wants me to admit there’s something wrong with me), and he’ll apologize when I don’t think there’s a problem, but refuse to aplogize when he doesn’t think my feelings should have been hurt, because he wasn’t “wrong”.  

    I’m on board with the 2nd idea of an apology (your partner’s).

  38. Lila…uhh…really? Cuz what that is reminding me of right now is my stepdad “apologizing” for getting mad and telling me I “left home” (implication: for bratty/immature reasons) instead of “got kicked out.” His apology was basically, “I’m not supposed to have said that and your mom is mad at me for saying that to you, therefore I apologize” (implied: even though I was right).

    Gross.

  39. I think karak said that she is the one who is likely to apologize even when she doesn’t think she’s wrong. So, it seems like what your stepdad did is technically similar to her way, not her partner’s way. Though certainly your stepdad’s apology is very different in spirit from what karak says she does. It sounds like he apologized begrudgingly and didn’t mean it. karak seems to say that she apologizes to express regret over the way things turned out, or to express sympathy, and to make peace.

    Anyway, both of those things are different from the way she described her partner’s style, which is to apologize only when he believes he has done something wrong. That is also my style. I use other methods, not apologies, to express regret or sympathy and to make peace. My male partner, on the other hand, has an apology style that is very similar to how karak described hers. So sometimes he actually apologizes to me for things like, say, expressing his anger loudly (usually over something unrelated to me, like conflicts at his workplace). I tell him, “It’s ok for you to be angry, you don’t need to apologize. It’s true that it is unpleasant for me to be around you when you are angry, and it may make me feel stressed or unhappy, but you have not done anything wrong to me. I prefer to leave you alone during those times to soothe myself, not because I am angry at you.” But, you know, he still prefers to apologize in these situations, because he regrets that his (perfectly fine) behavior stressed me out, and he wants to reestablish a peaceful connection. I guess that’s just his style.

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