Apology (act)

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A formal, written apology, sent from a government to a group of people that the government had harmed Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples.jpg
A formal, written apology, sent from a government to a group of people that the government had harmed

An apology is an expression of regret or remorse for actions, while apologizing (apologising in British English) is the act of expressing regret or remorse. [1] In informal situations, it may be called saying sorry. The goal of apologizing is generally forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration of the relationship between the people involved in a dispute. [2]

Contents

The nature of apologizing involves at least two people where one has offended the other. [3]

According to the attribution theory, giving an apology as early as possible leads to less conflict during the discussion and increases communication satisfaction. The way the apology is given affects the outcome and the process of forgiveness. [4] For example, putting genuine emotion into an apology generally helps resolve disputes more quickly and helps rid negative emotions faster. When responding to a crisis, there are multiple implications and ethical standards organizations and groups might follow. [5]

Elements

The basic elements of an apology communicate:

Most philosophers believe that apologies require the person apologizing to hold certain emotions, especially regret or remorse. [2] (The relevant difference between regret and remorse is that people who feel remorse believe that the situation was caused by their actions or inactions, whereas people can feel regret for situations beyond their control or outside of their involvement. [7] ) However, others, at least in some situations, believe that this is not strictly necessary. [2]

Efficacy

The way an apology is communicated and its timing affect the likelihood of success. The timing of the apology, the importance of the relationship, and the characteristics of the precipitating event are all factors that affect whether an apology will be acknowledged or gain forgiveness. [1] When an apology is given in an effective style, the offender has a greater chance of being forgiven. [8]

Apologizing shortly after the incident, or after the resulting problems were brought to the attention of the offender, can increase the apology's effectiveness. [8]

Ineffective apology statements focus on the harm done to victims while minimizing descriptions of the offender's context, motivation, or justification. [8] An effective statement apologizes for the offender's own actions, such as "I'm sorry I said that", and not for other people's reactions to those actions ("I'm sorry people were offended"). [8]

Sincerity matters, and the measure of sincerity is usually the recipient's view of the offender's emotional state, plus a credible commitment to not cause the same problem in the future. [2] Effective apologies clearly express remorse and may name efforts of restitution that the offender commits to undertake. [8] Apologies are more effective when they cost the offender something, whether that cost is financial, social status, or a commitment to do better in the future. [8]

Some Western scholars believe that integrative communication is key for forgiveness. The integrative communication approach avoids conflict by having those involved reveal their emotions in a calm manner. Depending on the communication in the relationship, people will either avoid the other person, seek revenge, or forgive. [9] Satisfying conversations are associated with delayed apologies and attributions of understanding. Communicating a sincere apology and displaying regret captures a genuine and positive response while acknowledging the recipient's feelings. [4]

When a group is at fault, such as a business, the effects of an apology might depend upon the person who makes the apology. For example, people will be more empathetic if an employee apologizes for a business error, but they may feel a better sense of justice if the head of the company makes the apology and offers compensation. [10]

Organizational and group apologies

In a communication crisis, there is an extensive process for apologizing. The rhetorical concept of kategória involves a community accusing an individual or organization of misconduct that leads to a social legitimation crisis. Trust is broken with wrongful actions and people expect to receive apologies in order to give forgiveness to re-establish the socio-cultural order. An apology during a crisis response must follow ethical standards in context, sincerity, and truthfulness in a timely and voluntary manner. The content for the communication includes an offer to correct the offense, a request for forgiveness, an expression of regret and admission of full responsibility, as well as true account of the problem. [5]

Whether to apologize

For political and business leaders, public apologies involve some risks. An apology that is "too little, too late, or too transparently tactical" can backfire and result in more damage. [11] A public leader may refuse to apologize to avoid being seen as incompetent. [8]

Some US states have adopted laws that allow healthcare providers to apologize for bad outcomes without the apology being considered evidence of wrongdoing for malpractice claims. These laws are associated with claims being settled more quickly and at a lower cost, especially for severe injuries. [12]

Voluntary and forced apologies

The forced apology, in which the perceived offender is coerced into making an apology, has a long history. As a form of ritual public humiliation, the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant approved of the forced apology. Kant thought that a monetary fine was not a fit punishment for insults delivered by a wealthy person of high social status to a person of low social status, because the social cost of making any apology to a low-status person was much greater than the financial cost of a fine. [13] Instead, Kant argued that legally forcing the guilty party to make a humiliating public apology to the poor or low-status person was a more appropriate punishment, because it punished the man who had humiliated someone with being humiliated himself. [13]

In modern Western cultures, the forced apology is dismissed as a meaningless theatrical gesture. It is generally said that an apology must be voluntary to be acceptable. [3]

Types

Critique

Each conflict is different, and therefore affects the time in which an apology should be made. People perceive wrongful actions in various ways and need time to cope with the circumstances and to process the offense. More research can be done to interpret negative and positive emotions during the time of the apology, in response to multiple apologies, when only one apology is received, and on the effects on the relationship after an apology. Communicating an apology varies between relationships, politicians, organizations, and companies because of what is expected by the individual, media, or society. Another important factor is the age of the individuals and what they require to forgive and move on. The communication of an apology's interpretation either verbally or non-verbally will vary among the population. [4] Apologies can be seen as ambiguous and be made in order to satisfy the victim's needs and feel more as an empty gesture. Apologies are not always meant to be sincere and may be used for manipulation purposes. [14] Repeated or frequent apologies can be more offensive than never apologizing. [8] [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guilt (emotion)</span> Cognitive or an emotional experience

Guilt is a moral emotion that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that they have compromised their own standards of conduct or have violated universal moral standards and bear significant responsibility for that violation. Guilt is closely related to the concept of remorse, regret, as well as shame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Negotiation</span> Dialogue intended to reach an agreement

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more parties to resolve points of difference, gain an advantage for an individual or collective, or craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. The parties aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement can be beneficial for all or some of the parties involved. The negotiators should establish their own needs and wants while also seeking to understand the wants and needs of others involved to increase their chances of closing deals, avoiding conflicts, forming relationships with other parties, or maximizing mutual gains. Distributive negotiations, or compromises, are conducted by putting forward a position and making concessions to achieve an agreement. The degree to which the negotiating parties trust each other to implement the negotiated solution is a major factor in determining the success of a negotiation.

Repentance is reviewing one's actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs, which is accompanied by commitment to and actual actions that show and prove a change for the better.

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remorse</span> Distressing emotion experienced by a person who regrets actions they have done in the past

Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past that they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. When a person regrets an earlier action or failure to act, it may be because of remorse or in response to various other consequences, including being punished for the act or omission. People may express remorse through apologies, trying to repair the damage they've caused, or self-imposed punishments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forgiveness</span> Renunciation or cessation of resentment, indignation, or anger

Forgiveness, in a psychological sense, is the intentional and voluntary process by which one who may felt initially wronged, victimized, harmed or hurt goes through a process in changing feelings and attitude regarding a given offender for his/her actions, and overcomes the impact of the offense, flaw or mistake including negative emotions such as resentment or a desire for vengeance. Theorists differ in the extent to which they believe forgiveness also implies replacing the negative emotions with positive attitudes, or requires reconciliation with the offender. In certain legal contexts, forgiveness is a term for absolving someone of debt, loan, obligation, or other claims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonverbal communication</span> Interpersonal communication through wordless (mostly visual) cues

Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, use of objects and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance, of voice (paralanguage) and of touch (haptics). A signal has three different parts to it, including the basic signal, what the signal is trying to convey, and how it is interpreted. These signals that are transmitted to the receiver depend highly on the knowledge and empathy that this individual has. It can also include the use of time (chronemics) and eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics).

Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form.

Apology, The Apology, apologize/apologise, apologist, apologetics, or apologetic may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Resentment</span> Emotion consisting of a mixture of disappointment, disgust and anger

Resentment is a complex, multilayered emotion that has been described as a mixture of disappointment, disgust and anger. Other psychologists consider it a mood or as a secondary emotion that can be elicited in the face of insult and/or injury.

Expectancy violations theory (EVT) is a theory of communication that analyzes how individuals respond to unanticipated violations of social norms and expectations. The theory was proposed by Judee K. Burgoon in the late 1970s and continued through the 1980s and 1990s as "nonverbal expectancy violations theory", based on Burgoon's research studying proxemics. Burgoon's work initially analyzed individuals' allowances and expectations of personal distance and how responses to personal distance violations were influenced by the level of liking and relationship to the violators. The theory was later changed to its current name when other researchers began to focus on violations of social behavior expectations beyond nonverbal communication.

A non-apology apology, sometimes called a backhanded apology, nonpology, or fauxpology, is a statement in the form of an apology that does not express remorse for what was done or said, or assigns fault to those ostensibly receiving the apology. It is common in politics and public relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regret</span> Negative conscious and emotional reaction to personal past acts and behaviours

Regret is the emotion of wishing one had made a different decision in the past, because the consequences of the decision one did make were unfavorable.

Crisis communication is a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. Crisis communication is aimed at raising awareness of a specific type of threat, the magnitude, outcomes, and specific behaviors to adopt to reduce the threat. The communication scholar Timothy Coombs defines crisis as "the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization's performance and generate negative outcomes" and crisis communication as "the collection, processing, and dissemination of information required to address a crisis situation."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face negotiation theory</span>

Face-Negotiation Theory is a theory conceived by Stella Ting-Toomey in 1985, to understand how people from different cultures manage rapport and disagreements. The theory posited "face", or self-image when communicating with others, as a universal phenomenon that pervades across cultures. In conflicts, one's face is threatened; and thus the person tends to save or restore his or her face. This set of communicative behaviors, according to the theory, is called "facework". Since people frame the situated meaning of "face" and enact "facework" differently from one culture to the next, the theory poses a cross-cultural framework to examine facework negotiation. It is important to note that the definition of face varies depending on the people and their culture and the same can be said for the proficiency of facework. According to Ting-Toomey's theory, most cultural differences can be divided by Eastern and Western cultures, and her theory accounts for these differences.

Relational transgressions occur when people violate implicit or explicit relational rules. These transgressions include a wide variety of behaviors. The boundaries of relational transgressions are permeable. Betrayal for example, is often used as a synonym for a relational transgression. In some instances, betrayal can be defined as a rule violation that is traumatic to a relationship, and in other instances as destructive conflict or reference to infidelity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Posture (psychology)</span> Aspect of nonverbal communication

In humans, posture can provide a significant amount of important information through nonverbal communication. Psychological studies have also demonstrated the effects of body posture on emotions. This research can be traced back to Charles Darwin's studies of emotion and movement in humans and animals. Currently, many studies have shown that certain patterns of body movements are indicative of specific emotions. Researchers studied sign language and found that even non-sign language users can determine emotions from only hand movements. Another example is the fact that anger is characterized by forward whole body movement. The theories that guide research in this field are the self-validation or perception theory and the embodied emotion theory.

Individualistic cultures are characterized by individualism, which is the prioritization or emphasis of the individual over the entire group. In individualistic cultures people are motivated by their own preference and viewpoints. Individualistic cultures focus on abstract thinking, privacy, self-dependence, uniqueness, and personal goals. The term individualistic culture was first used in the 1980s by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede to describe countries and cultures that are not collectivist, Hofstede created the term individualistic culture when he created a measurement for the five dimensions of cultural values.

Moral emotions are a variety of social emotions that are involved in forming and communicating moral judgments and decisions, and in motivating behavioral responses to one's own and others' moral behavior. As defined by Jonathan Haidt, moral emotions "are linked to the interests or welfare either of a society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent". A person may not always have clear words to articulate, yet simultaneously, that same person knows it to be true deep down inside.

Hurtful communication occurs when the receiver perceives a specific social interaction as upsetting or harmful emotionally. In the course of human interaction, one party will say or do something that results in unpleasant emotional feelings for another. Negative social interactions can be intentional, when one or both parties are involved in interpersonal conflict, or unintentional, such as when misunderstandings occur. Actions such as failure to recognize accomplishments or significant dates can cause hurtful outcomes within relationships.

References

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Further reading