Why apologize is often difficult

Denied excuses help the ego

02/08/2013

An apology makes the conscience easier and puts the scratched image back straight. But despite the benefits of repentance shown, many people fall for sentences like „I am sorry“ or „Sorry, I made a mistake“ very difficult. Australian researchers have now come to the cause on the trail.

Denied excuses have advantages
Karin often has arguments with her colleagues, who accuse her of failing to make mistakes and therefore not willing to compromise. Although the sales manager of a mid-sized company makes herself unpopular with her peers and knows that she often passes colleagues over to decisions, she is unwilling to acknowledge her misconduct.

Herbert also refuses to admit to his sister that he behaved unfairly at the last family celebration. „Finally my sister beats the strings. Because of such a trifle you do not have to crawl to crosses“, he justifies his wrongdoing to himself.

An Australian research group led by Tyler Okimoto from the University of Queensland recently asked why many find an apology so difficult. The result: a refusal to apologize has advantages, even if remorse would be appropriate from a moral point of view. So far, studies have only highlighted the benefits of acknowledged remorse, reducing guilt and repairing the scratched image.

Denied excuse promotes self-esteem
To find out why an apology is often difficult, 219 subjects were asked to write an email either apologizing to a person for a mistake from the past or explicitly not apologizing for it.

As it turned out, the subjects who wrote in their email felt they did not apologize for the mistake of having more control over their lives. In addition, the researchers also notice an effect that had an effect on self-esteem. „The results showed that the act of refusing an apology resulted in a greater self-confidence than an apology“, Okimoto and his team write in the trade magazine „European Journal of Social Psychology“.

In another study, subjects were asked to remember and reflect on experiences that denied them an apology. The researchers hoped to gain insight into the consequences of denied remorse.

It helps with your own justification
In addition to higher self-esteem, value retention was more pronounced among the objectors than among the penitents. The researchers suspect that this paradoxical effect helps to justify the misbehavior later on. Thus, "a refusal to apologize is not so much about the error as it is about the gain for the ego, which is greater in the case of refused repentance than the relief of conscience" on an apology. „These findings point to potential barriers to perpetrator-victim reconciliation after an interpersonal rift that implies the need for a better understanding of the psychology of the causers and their defensive behavior for selfish motives“, the researchers write. (Ag)

Picture: Rike