No Woman Is an Island: Apologies, Part I

When I first thought of writing about apologies it was in the 1990s. I thought about writing a book, but that was too daunting. What I really wanted to write was a blog, which was less daunting, but hadn't been invented yet.

Now, 15 years later, I wonder is the topic still relevant? Well, let’s look at a recent incident.

At a 2010 political rally for Rand Paul, campaign volunteers wrestled a 23-year-old protestor to the ground and one of them, Tim Profitt, placed his foot on her head and calmly stomped down (see video). Profitt was reported to have apologized, saying, “I'm sorry it came to that and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety.”

What is that? It is a lot of verbiage following the words “I’m sorry” but what it is not is an apology. Every word is an attempt to weasel out of responsibility for his reprehensible behavior.

We’ve all heard non-apology apologies from politicians, celebrities, and people in our own lives. (See Pearls Before Swine for a funny example.) What is going on?

Sometimes people think that if they didn’t mean to cause offense then they shouldn’t have to apologize. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding. You do not have to apologize for your thoughts, only for your actions. If your actions have caused negative consequences for someone, then you should apologize for causing those consequences no matter how innocent your intentions. Also, you should apologize for your own actions, regardless of the other person’s actions. It is not really apologizing to say, “I’m sorry I stepped on your foot, but you shouldn’t have been standing behind me.”

This brings us to another problem: the Proportional Blame Fallacy. Many people seem to think that they only need to apologize if the conflict is 100 percent their fault. Otherwise, it must be exactly 50-50 each person’s fault (and if that is true, why should you apologize first?) But I say this to you as a statistician: it is extremely rare for a conflict to be exactly 100 percent one person’s fault or exactly 50 percent each person’s fault.

Almost every conflict is partially each person’s fault. And guess what: it doesn’t matter what percent of the overall conflict is your fault. It doesn’t even matter who is “more” at fault. Yes, that is right! Even if you are only say 10 percent at fault for the overall conflict, you are still 100 percent responsible for your own actions.

That may sound unfair, but it is actually kind of liberating. It frees you from the need to do any difficult calculus to figure out your precise level of responsibility. You also do not need to wait for the other person to agree with you or to do anything besides be willing to listen to you. All you have to do is figure out what you did to contribute to the conflict, decide if you regret those actions and their consequences, and then apologize for those specific actions for which you are indeed sorry.

That part is very important: Do not bother to apologize if you are not really sorry.

When people are forced to apologize without understanding what they did or in fact feeling sorry, they come up with pseudo or fake apologies such as these:

• I’m sorry that you took what I said the wrong way.
• I’m sorry, but you hurt me first.
• I’m sorry for trying to do something nice.
• I’m sorry, but what do you want me to do about it? 
• I’m sorry that you made me hurt your feelings. 
• I’m sorry that you got hurt.
• I’m sorry. I said I’m sorry. Can’t you just get over it already? 
• I’m sorry that things got out of hand. We both said hurtful things.  Let’s let bygones be bygones. 

Wait, you mean that last one wasn’t an apology either? Nope. Not even.

Okay, you may be thinking, I think I know what an apology isn’t, but how do I know what one is? I will write more on that next time, but for now I will just tell you that if an apology does not start out with these exact words: “I am sorry that I…” it is probably not a true apology.