What Prevents Us from Saying ‘Sorry’?

The trick to maintaining human relationships is knowing how to resolve conflict, and an abundance of research has shown that an apology is a powerful tool for reconciliation.

But some disputes never get resolved, such as close friendships that collapse over a mundane squabble, or radio silence between family members that lasts for decades. Chicago Booth’s Shereen Chaudhry and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich’s Valeria Burdea identify a commonality in many of these fights: mutual blame. Their study suggests that when conflicts involve mistakes on both sides, neither person wants to say sorry first, creating a notable barrier to resolution.

Consider the hypothetical example of Fran and Saul, colleagues attending a work conference who are booked on the same flight home and decide to carpool to the airport in Fran’s rental car. When Fran goes to pick up Saul, she waits 20 minutes for him to pack his bag at the last minute. Then on the drive Fran thinks she can navigate to the airport without GPS, and they end up on a 20-minute detour. By the time they get through airport security, Fran and Saul’s plane has left.

They missed their flight thanks to both parties’ mistakes, and each person owes the other an apology. According to the research, however, both Fran and Saul might be hesitant to apologize first, worried the other person might not return the apology. This would lead to a stalemate, where neither person apologizes even though both are willing.

Chaudhry and Burdea ran a series of experiments testing hundreds of participants’ behavior in simulated mutual-blame scenarios. Some of the experiments manipulated arguments in the lab via computer games. In one instance, participants played games that involved allocating money and were sometimes given incentives to keep more money for themselves rather than share. Then they were told about the other person’s choices and given the opportunity to send a message to their game partner, knowing that their partner would have the same opportunity.

Across the experiments, the researchers find that participants who anticipated offering an apology on average expected to feel positive if they got one in return, and negative if they didn’t. And this is not about wanting forgiveness: they expected to feel better about getting a return apology than about being forgiven. They were therefore much more likely to apologize first if they thought it was very likely they would get an apology as well, but they were more likely to apologize second if they wanted to eliminate the possibility of not getting an apology in return.