It seems like one of the first and most important social lessons our parents teach us is to say sorry for our mistakes, especially when we have caused harm. We need positive relationships in our lives. We would also like to maintain a sense of innocence. Our errors can threaten both. Of course we should want to mend fences and make up for our misdoings when possible but there is some evidence that in some instances, apologies are at best ineffective and a worst detrimental to a person’s overall well-being.
So here’s a hot take… consider not apologizing at all.
The first thing to clarify is that the context for this piece is mostly in the public realm. This series of essays is about helping people who have been publicly shamed or whose lives have fallen apart largely due to their own poor choices. We’re not talking about your close interpersonal relationships in your day to day life.
When you experience a fall from grace it is a social death, or at least a social maiming. You are cut off and devalued. You are seen as bad, dirty, and maybe irredeemable. Your first reaction is going to be to repair this social damage and you’re likely to do so in the only way you know how: apologizing. Your hope is that through a sincere public apology people will see you taking accountability for your actions and you will be granted sufficient grace to be accepted back into polite society so that you can regain your position in its fabric.
Research by Richard Hannania1 suggests that this is not the case. It seems that apologizing publicly for insensitive remarks, for example, actually increases the desire of your ideological adversaries to see you be punished. Overall, it seems that for every person that accepts your apology and is willing to move on, there will be more people who find you even more socially unacceptable. People may say they want accountability and a sincere apology from some wrong doer but deep down it seems what they really want is an admission of guilt so that they have full clearance to continue to excoriate them. Apologies end up serving as public admissions of guilt and give the haters the license to continue hating.
In many cases, public offences have nuance. A person might be technically guilty but there are other circumstances that are not as widely known that make their infraction seem more understandable. Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving family, that sort of thing. But of course, apologies are ruined when you add excuses, so one is damned if they try and explain their behaviour in any sort of favourable contextualization.
When it comes from recovering from one’s own idiocy or malevolence it is important to take into consideration the pathway towards greater self esteem. After being publicly shamed a person’s esteem is dropped essentially to zero. It’s jarring to be seemingly hated by everyone who hears your name. Public apologies typically result in an even lower self esteem and lead a person to being perceived as weak.
What we want from a societal point of view is for wrong doers to recognize their errors, correct them when possible but then have the esteem and ability to change for the better. This might be somewhat of a naive aspiration but is it not in our best interest to truly rehabilitate those who transgress against the collective? In a liberal society we need to have the rule of law; to keep dangerous offenders contained and to make sure that justice is handed out but even then; we still want criminals to maintain dignity and humanity. This should certainly be true as well when it comes to someone who said something insensitive online or committed some other social sin.
It’s difficult when you value intellectual and moral humility. It feels uncharacteristically narcissistic to resist apologizing when you have clearly caused at least some discomfort. President Donald Trump might be the poster boy for never apologizing. He has offended, slandered, and intentionally hurt a long list of targets and refuses to be accountable. When E. Jean Carroll accused him of rape, he denied even knowing her and then defamed her for crossing him. After she was awarded $5 million in the defamation trial he immediately insulted her again, daring her to sue him a second time. And, the thing is… it sort of worked. People who hate Trump are infuriated but they always were so anyway. Those who support Trump believe him and laugh at the idea that he would have assaulted her in the middle of a department store after meeting her for the time. They cite her Anderson Cooper interview where she said “most people think rape is sexy,” and they closed the case assuming their guy was innocent. Teflon Don gets through another one.
To be fair President Biden also uses the same tactic, just not in such a brazen way. When challenged on some of his cognitive mishaps or policy blunders he boldly denies it and moves on. This is a common public relations strategy known as the DAD method of Deny And Double Down. It’s not humble. It’s not honest. But it gets the job done.
Psychologically, we benefit from having an internal narrative in which we are the hero. When you become evil or useless in your own story, depression sets in and you’re in trouble. Cognitive-dissonance makes us avoid confronting our demons. We opt instead to rationalize and evade, or we project our garbage onto other people and attack them (something your haters are inevitably doing themselves). This, so that we can still maintain ego-integrity; a sense of who we are.
In reality you can’t hide from your mistakes. You have sinned. You have caused pain and shame and loss. To be a person of integrity you need to confront your demons and learn how to change for the better. You need make things right in your interpersonal relationships when you can. But as important as that is, in most cases the greater public should not play a role in any of that. Mob mentality is too strong for any reasonable social justice to occur.
You can be accountable and repentant in private to those that matter but think hard before you attempt a public apology. It is unlikely to be effective in restoring your social status or making anyone feel better about the damage done. Don’t say sorry to the mob.
HANANIA, R. (2022). Does apologizing work? An empirical test of the conventional wisdom. Behavioural Public Policy, 6(4), 516-529. doi:10.1017/bpp.2019.35
Amen, brother!