Sorry, Sorry, Sorry’s far more affordable paperback iteration is out today! It’s called Getting to Sorry, and it’s full of the same humor and helpfulness as its predecessor. Learn how to elicit better apologies from coworkers, friends, family, and strangers. Read about why the miraculous human brain makes good apologies so rare. Explore great and crappy apologies throughout history. Find out why so much conventional wisdom about corporate and medical apologies is FLAT-OUT WRONG. And join us in our quest to make the world a more humane place, one good apology at a time.

AND GUESS WHAT, SNARLY JUST LOOKED AND THE KINDLE VERSION IS $1.99 TODAY. That is a Ginsu-knife-level deal.

Your SorryWatchers are really proud of this book, and we hope you’ll consider buying it for yourself, your colleagues, and your loved ones. Bonus: We’ve begun doing lively, amusing, substantive presentations to businesses on how good apologies are a key part of creating a healthy office culture. Reach out via email to book us.

Instead of going with your basic, vanity-based ho-hum “New Year, New You” approach to 2024 resolutions, why not resolve to apologize better, or screw your courage to the sticking place and ask for an apology from someone who owes you one,  this year? We know you can do it. You’re brave.

They’re enumerated in a pop-up on our home page and expounded upon in our book (along with lots of entertaining examples, celebrity anecdotes, historical nuggets, and social science sprinkled hither and yon like environmentally friendly glitter!) but we thought we’d reiterate them for you here.

The six and a half steps are relevant whether you’re a spouse who has yet again failed to unload the dishwasher, a second grader who has chased a classmate with a booger; a friend who has been caught gossiping horribly about another friend; an athlete who finally confessed to doping after lying for years; or a government that perpetrated racist medical horrors upon unknowing citizens. Here they are:

1. Say you’re sorry.

2. For what you did.

3. Show you understand why it was bad.

4. Only explain if you need to; don’t make excuses.
5. Say why it won’t happen again.

6. Offer to make up for it.


Six and a half. Listen.

To elaborate:

#1: Use the words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.” Not “I regret,” which is about YOUR feelings. Big whoop. A good apology is about the OTHER PERSON’S feelings, the feelings of the person you hurt. Don’t say “I’m apologetic,” or “I’d like to apologize” or “I feel terrible about what happened” or “I feel shame about the situation.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. YOU, YOU, YOU.

#2: What you did: Say it. Don’t apologize for “that thing last week,” or “about our argument.” A good apology takes ownership, and you can’t own a thing you don’t name.

#3: You’re apologizing for the hurt you caused — so why did what you did cause pain? Use your emotional intelligence. We know you have it. We believe in you! Say it aloud. Again, this is key to taking responsibility, which is a thing people really want in an apology.

#4: Explanations can all-too-easily become excuses: “I’m sorry I’m late; my train got held in the station” is an explanation for lateness; “I’m sorry I’m late; you scheduled this at a really bad time and rush-hour traffic is impossible and I had to stop to pick up the cupcakes you insisted I bring and I was under a ton of stress and there’s a lot going on in my life” is a litany of excuses. (And if you were supposed to get the cupcakes, you should have budgeted that into your travel plans, friend.) You might not want to offer an explanation at all, because are you sure it’s NOT an excuse? (This is why Snarly always test-drives her apologies to Sumac; Snarly tends to make excuses. She’s ashamed of this tendency…but that’s no excuse.)

#5: What steps are you taking to ensure this issue won’t recur? Maybe you resolve not to have more than one drink at lunch. Maybe you’ve now learned that “lame,” “Jew someone down,” or “gyp” is a slur, and you should have known, but you vow to eliminate that term from your speaking and writing vocabulary. Maybe you’re scheduling a training session for the entire staff (including the C-suite, and not just the lowest paid or customer-facing people) so the racially insensitive thing or misogynistic, illegal thing you did won’t ever be repeated.

#6. What’s an offer of repair? If you spilled coffee on their sleeve, offer to pay for the dry cleaning. If you ate their yogurt out of the office fridge, buy them a six-pack of their fave Fage. If you regularly created a hostile workplace for female employees, offer a hefty settlement (in tandem with making systemic changes so this doesn’t happen again, which falls under Step #5). On a much larger level, if you unjustly put an entire group of people in an internment camp during wartime, offer reparations (our book, for instance, compares the U.S. and Canadian responses to each country’s shameful history of rounding up its citizens of Japanese heritage).

#6.5. Let the other person have their say. Don’t protest. Don’t interrupt. Hear them out, even if it’s hard.

Look, real life is complicated and full of nuance, and that’s why we wrote a book and not just a list. To be clear, a good apology doesn’t erase terrible behavior. A bad, gaslighting apology can be a further insult. There are people who refuse to accept even good apologies, and people who use flawed-but-well-intentioned apologies as weapons rather than teachable moments.

Apologies are part of good-faith efforts to build a better world, and they require work.

We appreciate the shout-out to SorryWatch and our forthcoming book in this week’s New Yorker. (That featured image is not of this week’s New Yorker; we just like cats and William Steig.)

SorryWatch agrees with author Jill Lepore that ugh, Twitter.

More precisely: We agree that the process in which some people clamor for apologies on social media while others invariably insist on rejecting those apologies while still others holler that the person being called on to apologize DOES NOT OWE ANYONE AN APOLOGY FUCK THOSE SNOWFLAKES DO NOT APOLOGIZE DAMMIT is loud and exhausting.

But we’d also argue that this is a social media problem, not an apology problem. People act like assholes on social media because social media, as we write in our book, is designed to turn people into assholes. Being infuriated = engagement! Being infuriated = clicks!

Managing to give a good public apology in spite of all this shrieking and snarking is truly commendable. But good public apologies do exist! They are rare; and no matter how good they are, they won’t be accepted by all parties. But that’s no reason not to deliver them. You give a good apology because it’s the right thing to do, not because you know how it’ll be received.

Truthfully, our book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry focuses less on public statements and more on private apologies, apologies that take place between non-famous humans, because we feel there’s more to learn and more to gain from being generous to each other in real life than by demanding that someone like, oh, say, Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers publicly apologize for making fun, oh ho ho, of the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi. Neither SorryWatch nor the Pelosi family will ever get the kind of apology we want from Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers.

Lepore notes, “a culture of forced, performed remorse…has elevated wrath and loathing” and  “demeaned sorrow, grief, and consolation.” Yes! That’s why we say, over and over, that you shouldn’t apologize if you’re not sorry. When you’re not sorry, you apologize badly. Pretty much invariably. Whether that apology is public or private. And bad apologies make everything worse. If you’re not sorry, say nothing. Because another truth about the social-media whirl is that it never stops moving. If you’re not sorry, and you opt not to apologize, Twitter will almost always move on. (For, uh, as long as Twitter continues to exist.) The folks who are angry at you will be distracted by another bright shiny apology-shaped object before too long. OMG, verified fake Eli Lilly says that insulin should be free! Chappelle’s an antisemite! Jorts the labor movement cat infuriated some people with disabilities by criticizing personal-shopper apps!

God, it’s exhausting. Social media demands an immediate response (to everything!). But a good apology almost always requires sitting with what you did. We’ve mentioned the research on this, and go into it more deeply in the book. You have to parse why someone’s mad at you, wrestle with your own ego, determine whether you want to apologize…and if so, how.

So, forthwith: Here are some good public apologies. (There are some more good celeb apologies in an earlier post, should you crave more.)

Actress Ellie Kemper apologized on social media for participating in a debutante ball, twenty years earlier, established by a white supremacist group. When the story broke, she initially said nothing. Social media calls for her to apologize got louder and louder. Instead of reacting defensively (by blaming her youth, which was essentially the way Mark Wahlberg apologized for his racist history) she took responsibility.

Florence Pugh apologized for her history of culturally appropriative wardrobe choices in an imperfectly expressed but sincere Instagram post that sounded like it was written by an actual human, not a team of crisis management advisors and publicists. She wrote that she initially didn’t understand why her red-carpet sporting of box braids and cornrows was problematic, but she educated herself. She wrote that at first, “I was defensive and confused, white fragility coming out, plain and simple,” but then she listened to a friend who explained that “when Black girls do it they’re mocked and judged, but when white girls do it, it’s only then perceived as cool.”

In our book, we discuss Questlove’s public apology for Instagram posts that mocked Japanese people’s accents and intonations. Like Pugh, he wrote his apology in his own voice, so he did not sound like an Edelman global communications professional in a blunt-angled lob and a St. John knit blazer. “[G]iven that black culture consistently finds itself at the butt end of so many offensive ‘outsider’ jokes, I should be way, way more sensitive (after all, who’s zooming who),” he wrote. “I for one, should never allow my cultural bias to take precedence over my ‘examined life’ (clunkers be damned).”

As our six-point apology blueprint notes, a good apology isn’t just words. Emory University and Stanford University have both apologized for their histories of keeping out (or kicking out) Jewish students. Are these apologies extremely belated? Yes. Did the universities lie and dissemble for years about what they did? Also yes. We’d argue, though, that even apologies that are years late and produced under pressure are worth considering. No one ever has to accept an apology. But there is also no expiration date on the chance to apologize. We like to say “apologies are mandatory; forgiveness isn’t.” Full and public disclosure of the historic record, and transparent consideration of how to build a better future are also part of the act of apology. Apologies are acts as well as statements.

Oh, and though President Trump made it clear that he believes apologies are a sign of weakness (good ones are actually a sign of strength, but go off) (no really, go off), some Republicans are capable of apologizing well, when they choose to. Here’s a good one: Utah pol Spencer Cox apologizing for past homophobia. BTW, not only was this Lieutenant Governor not punished by voters for apologizing well, he went on to be elected Governor.

Just something to think about.

PS. Thank you to Publishers Weekly (link requires a subscription, sorry sorry sorry), which just featured a roundup of 12 forthcoming helpful books that “ditch the traditional resolution model…in favor of achievable change.” Sorry, Sorry, Sorry led the pack; the article echoed PW’s review that called our book “an accessible and well-informed resource for navigating difficult conversations.” Good apologies are achievable, friends!

 

 

Snarly and Sumac very much enjoyed appearing on A Bintel Brief: The Jewish Advice Podcast. A Bintel Brief (Yiddish for “a bundle of letters”) began in 1906 as an advice column in The Forward, the venerable old Jewish newspaper. It answered readers’ questions about romance, life as a greenhorn, adapting to the quirks of America, finding a job. Then came a Bintel Brief book that compiled 60 years of all kinds of letters, and then a delightful illustrated version by the great cartoonist Liana Finck. And now, a podcast! Hosted by the delightful Ginna Green, a movement builder on the boards of progressive Jewish orgs like Bend the Arc and the Jews of Color Initiative, and Lynn Harris, a writer-comedian-activist who founded Gold Comedy and co-created the superhero known as Breakup Girl, it asked us to come on and answer a letter writer’s Dungeons and Dragons-related apology question and to talk about apology in general.

Snarly (in her alter ego as Marjorie) also did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) about apologies, Jewish children’s literature, and her hatred of borscht. (It is called “Ask Me Anything,” after all.) Snarly is no longer taking questions but you can read the entertaining conversation here.

In other news, SORRYWATCH HAS BEEN CENSORED IN CHINA! Lots of books are printed in China these days, and ours was supposed to be one of them. But after receiving the manuscript, the people in charge refused to print it. They would not tell us why. We have a suspicion, though: In the book, there is an apology-related story that involves the Dalai Lama. We suspect that there are a number of words that get one banned in China. We suspect that “Dalai Lama” are two of them. Never fear, the book is being printed in America and will, God willing, be on shelves on January 10^th. You can pre-order it (please do! Pre-orders are apparently helpful things!) through any of the links here. Or just ask the nice folks at your local bookstore or library to order a copy. (Did we mention we love libraries?)

ANYHOO. We are truly living large, what with all these MEDIA DOINGS (Snarly also did a segment on the evening news in San Francisco about Will Smith’s pretty-good, B+-rated recent apology), and our lovely publisher, Gallery Books, even made us some SNAZZY NOTECARDS.

Lest you think this has all gone to our head, however, Snarly found one of the snazzy notecards lying on the kitchen counter with a corner ripped out of it. Someone in her household was at that very moment using it to make a FILTER for a JOINT, aka a hand-rolled cigarette of the marijuana, the devil’s lettuce.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading romance, it’s what an earnest and sincere apology looks like. A really moving grovel is a staple of the genre.

This didn’t even come close.

— Olivia Waite (@O_Waite)
https://twitter.com/O_Waite/status/1215326550016417802

January 9, 2020

SorryWatch frequently uses the term “apology-shaped object” for something that has the vague contours of an apology but is not one. Now we have learned a new term for this phenomenon! “Onomatopology,” coined by NPR host and author of Evvie Drake Starts Over(delightful!) Linda Holmes, meaning “a celebrity or politician statement that sounds like an apology and makes noises like an apology but actually is not an apology.”

The web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books used “onomatopology” (sometimes spelled “onomatapology”— as far as SorryWatch is concerned, both are correct) to describe the statement issued by Romance Writers of America for its recent messy mess.

In short (not very short, sorry), the organization punished Chinese-American author Courtney Milan last month for pointing out racism in another author’s romance novel. Milan had tweeted a bunch of (racist!) quotes from the book; the author of the book said that Milan’s “bullying,” “neo-Nazi”-esque tweets had cost her a 3-book deal. This turned out to be untrue, and the author later said she felt used by RWA.

However, the toxicity ball was rolling! It could not be stopped! Turns out that a mysterious RWA panel — not the regular ethics committee — had ruled that Milan was deserving of punishment (it was all sort of like Double Secret Probation in Animal House); when RWA members asked for transparency and accountability, the board rescinded the punishment. Meanwhile a bunch of romance authors pointed out that they’d complained to RWA numerous times about racism and homophobia within the organization and in publishing, as well as about a publisher’s failure to pay authors, but nothing was ever done about those complaints…only about the writer of color who’d made white ladies feel bad. A bunch of board members at RWA stepped down in protest; a bunch of publishers pulled out of RWA events; a bunch of RWA members quit. In the end, incoming RWA president Damon Suede (aka Nomad Velour, a coinage by New York Times bestselling writer Tessa Dare), who was apparently masterminding the Milan mishegas, stepped down. You can read more here and here.

But back to onomatopology! An excellent word! The announcement from RWA is an onomatopology. It uses the words “painful,” “tumultuous,” and “significant failures…to meaningfully address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion,” and “deficiencies in our communications and transparency,” but does not use the words “sorry” or “apologize,” or even those words’ pallid cousin, “regret.” (RWA has a history of poor apologizing, alas.)

Furthermore, the statement is unspecific about the “ethics matter” it alludes to, and it discusses its “moves forward” without grappling with how the organization got to this point. Some of the characters involved with double-secret machinations are staying on to help supervise the “steps to rebuild.” That’s a problem. The steps themselves are good: revamping the awards program (authors of color have won astonishingly few awards), auditing the “recent ethics matter,” and working with a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion specialist…but some of the people involved in the “ethics matter” are also involved in the investigation of it. Who is hiring the DEI consultant? How can the membership be assured of that person’s impartiality? Particularly since all the members of the RWA board who were horrified by the President and Executive Officer’s conduct have already quit?

This story isn’t over. But thanks for teaching us the term “onomatopology,” Linda Holmes and Smart Bitches. That’s something.

We mostly talk about apologies here; just for kicks, let’s take a quick detour into forgiveness.

The web site My Jewish Learning (Snarly is a fan) has been emailing readers a series of essays called “Explore Forgiveness.” It’s a project designed to help folks prepare for Yom Kippur — the most somber day in the Jewish calendar, devoted to collective penitence and prayer –“through contemporary examinations of the role of forgiveness in our lives.” Helpful! Here are some of my favorite snippets published so far. (You should read the whole collection.)

Do you have to forgive someone who has wronged you? “Atonement, in Jewish tradition, requires accountability. While we are obligated to forgive the perpetrator who has apologized and started the hard work of behavioral change, when those two elements are not present, we have no obligation to forgive.” From: Must We Forgive Someone Who Hasn’t Made Amends?”  by Rabbi Sari Laufer.

How can self-inventory help us apologize better? “Seeking forgiveness from another person demands that we turn inward, determine which of our behaviors were hurtful, and strategize how we might alter them. Once we have asked for forgiveness from the person we wronged, we must forgive ourselves. Such personal scrutiny is known as a cheshbon hanefesh. How fortunate we are to have the annual gift that these Days of Repentance offer us. We have the opportunity to approach those whom we have wronged, specify those actions which we believe have caused pain and ask for forgiveness. Then, and only then, we should speak these words of remorse. This is the essence of what atoning is all about. From “After ‘I’m Sorry,’ the Real Work Begins,” by Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr.

How do we balance justice and mercy when it comes to forgiveness?  “The willingness to temper your own outrage and anger out of respect for the other has another implication: By focusing on the offender as a human being, you create the emotional conditions necessary for that person to take full responsibility and to make appropriate amends. It therefore increases the likelihood of both forgiveness (mercy) and some kind of reparations (justice).”From “How to Forgive Is As Important as When to Forgive,” by Julie Hirschfeld, Ph.D.

D0 we have to forgive gaslighters and manipulators? “The rabbinic literature offers us some guidance on the pitfalls of forgiveness. According to the Mishnah, ‘One who says, ‘I will sin, and then repent, I will sin and then repent,’ — does not have what it takes to repent. One who says: ‘I will sin, and Yom Kippur will erase it,’ Yom Kippur will not erase it. Yom Kippur erases transgression a person commits against God, but [Yom Kippur does not erase] transgression against another person…until [the transgressor] makes things right with [the victim].’ Forgiveness can make a lot of things possible — and not all of those things are good. The possibility of forgiveness is not intended as a way to allow people to manipulate the system and harm others with impunity. Forgiveness can erase many things, but it can’t erase the need for all conflicts. Sometimes, taking the side of the oppressed means withholding forgiveness from an oppressor.” From “Forgiveness is Not Always a Virtue,” by Rabbi Ruti Regan.

Yom Kippur this year starts the evening of October 8. Happy New Year to all who celebrate…fast well (if you’re fasting), and take care of yourself, everyone.

In 2013, Sumac visited Camp Playapology at Burning Man. Her account of the visit remains one of our most popular posts.

In 2019, Snarly went to Burning Man for the first time. Her spouse, Dr. Cheezie, was attending his 22nd Burn. (It’s a mixed marriage.) Of course she had to visit Camp Playapology.

As Sumac noted six years ago, Playapology exists to help Burners apologize. It was started by D-Stracted and MadKap (aka David and Matt) seven years ago. Its genesis: D-Stracted had previously been a lousy, lazy camp member at a different camp. Camp Playapology’s very first delivery was to D-Stracted’s earlier campmates.

In the camp’s own words, they’re “part playa florist, part relationship repair therapy, part social experiment on atonement.” So let’s say you’re in Black Rock City and you’ve done something you know caused pain to someone else. You can visit Playapology and go through their homemade selection of apology cards (or make your own — they offer art supplies), deliver the card yourself or ask Playapology volunteers to do it. You can even send wine or flowers (artificial ones — real flowers aren’t allowed because the petals create MOOP, which stands for Matter Out of Place, aka detritus that would sully this starkly beautiful place).

You can also request a singing Sorrygram, delivered via a state-of-the-art-ish boom box (below) with your choice of apology songs on individual thumb drives. For what it’s worth, Sorrywatch would not forgive anyone who sent us Justin Bieber.

This year the camp had around 22 participants. “It’s been bigger, but we like it small,” D-Stracted told Snarly. Campers are asked to put in one 3.5-hour shift; they rarely fail to show up. Which is somewhat unusual. Burners are not always reliable, as the choice of apology cards seems to indicate.

The camp hosts fun events throughout the week: A Sorry Soirée on the first Sunday night, A ¡Lo Siento Hora Feliz! on Tuesday with sangria and Latin music, and a huge Hail Bloody Mary Saturday event Snarly and Cheezie had just missed. Fortunately, while Snarly interviewed the Playapology founders, fellow campers plied Cheezie with a variety of flavored vodka shots. They had 34 kinds.

Playapology tends to attract mensches. Or at least, people who can be counted on. “An important thing is that we’re adults,” D-Stracted said. “We’re in our 30s and up. I’m 52 — I’m the oldest. We’re kind to each other and we don’t run out of Bloody Mary mix.” Lots of the campers are scientists and psychologists. “I’d guess we have more Ph.Ds in our camp than any other,” posited MadKap, a molecular biologist with his own lab. (D-Stracted, a TV writer and producer in Los Angeles, is the odd man out — among other credits, he helped create the show My Cat From Hell.) MadKap guesstimated that around 50% of the campers have doctorates, which impressed Dr. Cheezie. (Dr. Cheezie has a doctorate too, as do about 30% of the campers at his camp, Liminal Labs. Not that anyone is competitive.)

“We are a snark-free zone,” MadKap said. “This camp is sincere. Burning Man can be a snarky place, and we want to be a refuge from that. People often come by to say, ‘Hey, I came here three years ago and you saved my relationship,’ or ‘You saved my camp.'” As if on cue, a young woman biked up and said, “I just wanted to tell you guys this is my first Burn and you’re my favorite camp.”

You may also avail yourself of the services of a Conciliation Concierge. This helpful individual will talk to you about what you did wrong, ask questions, and help you determine a course of action. “We don’t deliver an apology if it’s better for them to do it themselves,” Concierge Sue told me. “But sometimes it’s better for us to do it if they don’t know how it will be received.” For instance, a drunk guy who had been rude to a bartender realized in the semi-sober light of day that he’d erred and wanted to apologize, but wasn’t sure the bartender would want to see him again. In this case, a third-party apology was a good choice.

The most frequent apology topics involve rudeness, murky consent issues, and irresponsibility. Are there any apologies Playapology refuses to deliver? “Cheating is something we’re careful with,” D-Stracted said. “Maybe you don’t really want a stranger coming into your camp with a singing telegram: ‘Sorry I fucked someone else!'” Instead, the Conciliation Concierge helps people figure out why they cheated; then they help them determine what to say to the wronged party. If the sinner just wants absolution but doesn’t really get what they did wrong and/or isn’t determined to amend their behavior, Playapology won’t aid and abet them.

Like SorryWatch, Playapology doesn’t believe in apologizing when you don’t mean it. They’re dead serious about it, whether the issue is infidelity or something less weighty. At the Bloody Mary party, for instance, guests are asked to share something from the previous week that they regret. If they answer sarcastically or flippantly, MadKap refuses to serve them. (And if they’re truly regretful, they can choose to be paddled or flogged. If they want! Consent is key!)

Snarly asked MadKap why he was interested in co-creating the camp. Partially he was interested in building the infrastructure (he’s handier than D-Stracted; the camp has a cool, efficient modular structure). But he was also interested in the impact of apologies. “People have so much trouble with them,” he reflected. “But when you own your part it’s really powerful. It’s hard to own your own guilt.” Sometimes, though, you just have to sit with the discomfort. “You shouldn’t apologize if you’re going to cause more pain,” he said. “Maybe the best thing for you is to feel guilty and not expect to be absolved.”

One of the 10 Principles of Burning Man is gifting. “The value of a gift is unconditional,”  says of the event’s web site. “Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.” That’s true for apologies, too. You don’t apologize because you want an apology in return. You don’t demand to be forgiven.

MadKap gave Snarly a gift — a little muslin bag with steampunk-y trimmings.

Inside she found two sets of earplugs in cute little containers and two bright plastic blinky lights. There was also a note, reading in part: “One item in each pair is meant for you, and the other is for you to re-gift to anyone you’d like, friend or stranger.”

Like apologies, small gifts often have wider repercussions. And like apologies, unexpected kindnesses help create a world we want to live in…and not only for one week in the desert with no pants on.

Hello, apology fans! Prompted by a SorryWatcher, we wanted to expound on this common phrase, as well as its corollary, “This is not who we are” — with “we” referring to an institution or country.

DO NOT USE THIS PHRASE IN YOUR APOLOGY.

At best, it shows that you don’t understand what you’re apologizing for. At worst, it shows that you’re a lying liar who lies.

Whether you’re an actress being charged with disorderly conduct while your husband is being charged with driving drunk, a governor who wore blackface definitely once and possibly twice but who can really say, a teenage girl who bullied a boy with cerebral palsy by making him lie down in freezing mud so she could use him as a human bridge, a Blue Jay who hurled a homophobic epithet at the pitcher who had the temerity to strike him out, a golfer who won $1.3 million at a PGA tournament and paid his caddie $5000, a wrestler caught on tape using the n-word, a fashion designer who publicly questioned whether the women accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment were “asking for it by presenting all the sexuality and the sensuality,” or a U.S. Representative who threatened a certain president’s former attorney, you made whatever you were apologizing for worse when you used that phrase.

Why? Because when you say “this is not who I am” about a thing you said or did, ipso facto, that thing is indeed who you are. Sorry. We don’t make the rules. You did or said the thing. Saying “this is not who I am” means you’re not actually taking responsibility — meaning you’re missing the single most important element of a good apology.  You’re calling yourself better than your own words or actions. You’re not taking ownership. You’re not being humble.

We are all exactly as good as our best selves and exactly as bad as our worst selves. That’s the glory and the sorrow of being human. There’s a saying attributed to the 18th century Hasidic Rabbi Simha Bunim: “Everyone should have two pockets, with a note in each pocket: One note should say, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ The other should say ‘For my sake the world was created.'”  (See how terrible it is that women’s clothing so often lacks pockets.)

There’s a reason “this is not who I am” was a space on our very first Bad Apology Bingo card, along with those other perennial classics “sorry if,” “those closest to me know,” and “let us move forward.” It’s so common because the sentiment behind it is so universal: “I don’t want to be the kind of person who did or said this terrible thing.” Then say that! Say “This is not who I want to be.” Say “I’m going to be better.”

If you’re genuinely so shocked by your own conduct that you can’t believe it’s really you, you need to do a ton of introspection and a ton of work toward redemption — the former is internal, the latter outward focused. You need to make it right with others. Think hard about what that might mean in the case of your individual transgression.

If you actually don’t see that what you did was horrid, or if you’re creating excuses (for instance, “I had one drink too many!” or “I had just stepped off a long flight and was exhausted!” or “but that kid was already lying there in the mud when I stepped on him and other kids did it first and anyway he volunteered and we thought that he thought it was funny!”), you’re not doing any of the work you need to do to actually be the kind of person you claim you are.

And when you say “this is not who we are” about a country in which children are locked in cages, prisoners are regularly tortured, and police murders of people of color are a regular occurrence, you’re either denying the truth or you can’t handle the truth. Joe Biden, take a note.

When your apology contains this phrase, you don’t deserve to be forgiven.

One half of Team SorryWatch is now off in the desert, perhaps with no pants on, perhaps not. (This was a reference to one of our most popular posts, in which Sumac reported about a camp at Burning Man that specialized in helping people apologize. It’s a great post; read it if you haven’t.) The tragic, left-behind non-Burner therefore decided to take her mind off her loneliness by compiling a roundup of recent apology research.

Let’s begin with the work of Oberlin psychology professor Cindy Frantz. Prompted by a student, she ran studies determining that yes, there is such a thing as a “too-early apology.” A precipitous apology “can make the victim feel like the perpetrator did not take the time to understand their perspective and therefore doesn’t understand what they did wrong.” So rather than leaping into the discomfort/reaction-to-criticism breach, take some time to ponder why the other person is so hurt or angry. Educate yourself, ask questions, listen, and then apologize once you’ve truly understood the impact of your actions. Celebrities and politicians often screw this up. “For an apology to be effective, the perpetrator has to understand the victim’s worldview and experience,” Frantz told Williams Magazine. “That’s where my work on too-early apologies informs my understanding of public apologies—the central theme here is the perpetrator’s ability (or inability) to take the victim’s perspective.” (How long is optimal to wait before apologizing? ALAS. More research is needed.)

Moving on, here’s an interesting look at the impact of apologies in social rejections. It was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology by researchers at Dartmouth and UT Austin. Let’s say you’ve just turned down a request to go out for drinks, or told a colleague you’d prefer not to work on a project together. Should you apologize? Surprisingly, probably not. Lead author Gili Freedman and her colleagues note that “apologies may backfire within a social rejection because they may make targets feel compelled to express forgiveness without actually making targets feel forgiveness and may make the target feel the rejector is not sincere.” In other words, when you apologize, the other person feels pressure to say “that’s okay”…even if IT IS NOT. “Social norms dictate that we forgive someone if they apologize,” Freedman et al write. “Therefore, targets are put in a position where they are expected to forgive the rejection even if they do not believe the apology is sincere.”

You should probably read this paper because it includes the phrase “participants allocated more hot sauce” (metaphorical hot sauce! to be theoretically ingested, punitively, by the person who socially rejected the participant in an experiment!) and “A Hurt Feelings score was computed.” Snarly is personally computing her Hurt Feelings score at all times. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Another fun finding in this study: Social rejections with apologies were felt to be less sincere than social rejections without apologies. And perhaps ironically, the rejector becomes LESS likely to actually be forgiven than if they hadn’t apologized at all.

The study also notes that sometimes people who apologize aren’t interested in real forgiveness. Sometimes they just want to feel better themselves (“I said I was sorry, whew, all good!”), and sometimes, in Freedman and company’s words, they “may just want the quickest solution (i.e., the most efficient form of rejection).” The authors also note, dovetailing with Frantz’s research, that more time between the social rejection and the reaction might change the outcomes.

Finally, there’s the question of wording. Does it matter if you apologize first, then give the social rejection, or if you give the social rejection, and then apologize for it? We need MOAR RESEARCH! But there are hints! Researchers in the business realm have found that when you’re writing a “nope” letter to a job applicant, it’s better to put the rejection right up front, so that the applicant immediately knows what’s what. “Previously, letter writers were cautioned to begin with a positive statement (i.e., a buffer), but research on buffers found that rejected applicants were more upset because they were then surprised by the rejection after reading something positive.” Thus: We regret to inform you that you suck.

More research on apologies and power (does being powerful make your apology more or less likely to be accepted?) in another post.

PS. Snarly truthfully did not want to go to Burning Man. It has dirt. She makes no apologies.

If you try to convince your parents an excellent family vacation would be going to the far north to see the caribou migration, and they say “We’ll see,” you might suspect that to mean “no.” What if you tell a sibling your parents said “We’ll see,” so maybe they’re open to the idea, and your sibling says “Yeah, right”? Even though “yeah” and “right” are positive words, it probably doesn’t mean they think a trip to the Arctic is happening.

Unofficial word usages happen to adults, too. All the time. Most dictionaries won’t help you interpret these common English word meanings. “Yeah” means “no”? Yeah, no. But now there’s The Evasion-English Dictionary, by Maggie Balistreri, a brilliant little book with hints on when “you” means “I,” when “even though” means “because,” and when “but” means “bullshit.” (We quote from the new Expanded Edition, still quite brief.) She wants us to recognize this dialect and STOP USING IT.

One of the “you = I” examples Balistreri offers is the sentence “You know when you drunk text an ex and look like a fool?” She calls this the “presumptuous you = I,” which denotes “an expectation or nervous hope for reassurance that everyone would have done likewise in the same situation.”

Hmm. “You know how a kid asks for something, and you don’t want them to pitch a fit, so you don’t say no, you just say ‘I’ll think about it’?”

For “even though = because,” here’s a Balistreri sample: “He brought up the same old argument right there over dinner even though he knew it would embarrass me.” Or, “Texas saw an increase in teen pregnancy even though they’ve invested so much in abstinence education programs.”

Balistreri also argues that in some cases “but” is a contraction. Of “bullshit.” Consider “Well I’m really glad you brought that to my attention. I want nothing more than for employees to feel that they can come to me with suggestions for improvement. After all, I consider this organization to be a team, Bu(llshi)t I can’t implement that kind of change at this point in time.”

Or: “You blocked me. I get it. I can take a hint. Bu(llshi)t I just need you to tell me why—what I did wrong. You owe me that much.”

She carefully teases out different uses of “actually”: the hollow victory, the pleasant surprise, the low self-esteem, the damage control, the diplomatic correction, and the self-soother actually. Our favorite of her examples is one of the diplomatic correction variety: “It was my first language, so actually, I’m pretty sure I pronounced it right: broo-sketta.” One of the most horrifying is a self-soother: “I didn’t mean to reply-all but you know, it had to be said. So, in the long run, actually, I’m glad it happened.”

Sorrywatch would love The Evasion-English Dictionary for these helpful distinctions alone, but it turns out she blazes on apologies too.

We love Balistreri on “Sorry if.” She gives examples of tiny sensory stimuli that people are able to detect. “A watch ticking twenty feet away. One teaspoon of sugar dissolved in two gallons of water. A candle burning thirty miles away.”

Then, “We have a sensory threshold for bullshit, too, just enough tick and taste and glow for us to register it on our detectors. It‘s the apology if, as in, ‘I’m sorry if I caused any harm.‘”

Oh yes – people are sensitive to that if. Perhaps we get sensitized to it, developing an allergic response because of times it’s been directed at us.

Balestreri writes, “The apology if doesn’t go unnoticed. The minute it‘s issued, we pounce in a frenzy of ritual rending: ‘If? If? You’re sorry if you hurt anyone?‘ From the specific criticism often comes the more general question: Why are people so bad at apologies?”

Because they want Sorrywatch to have plenty of material? No, that’s not Balestreri’s take. Of public if apologies, she writes, “I don’t know that anyone is bad at apologizing if the apology is a measure of sincerity and compassion. It‘s a pretty accurate revelation of character. Shitty apology from shitty person who did the thing he needs to apologize for: What‘s the wonder? And since ‘I’m sorry if‘… is a much-criticized phrase, its refusal to die points to strategy as a hedge against liability (the lawyer in the ear: ‘Say if and we’ll deny everything‘). It also tosses us a sentence carcass to rend in effigy, a squirt of squid ink to distract us while the apologizer disappears into a treatment center.”

EXCELLENT POINTS! Although we encounter lots of sorry-if in private life, too. We’re not ready to rule out panicky ass-covering from people who are so dismayed by looking bad that they haven’t thought through what they’re saying.

She gives some classic examples.

“I appreciate the overwhelming response to my reference to the Holocaust yesterday and apologize if it offended anyone.”

“Look, first of all, I think this is a misunderstanding. I misspoke. I’m sorry if you took it as an insult.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry if you’re mad at me.” (Simple, classic, COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE.)

Balestreri also addresses cases where an apology is followed by “One mistake. Does that make me a bad person?” She gives “[a]n unbelievable quote from Timothy McVeigh’s former Army pal Michael Fortier during the Oklahoma City bombing trial” which “captures this magical belief that the thing you did was not you-you: ‘If you don’t consider what happened in Oklahoma, Tim is a good person.’ If.”

She’s also eloquent about the “superfluous sorry,” where the word is one that “can be deleted with no loss of meaning.”

“I don’t mean to laugh. It’s rude. Sorry, it’s just, that was funny.”

“Sorry! That’s okay, no worries, you didn’t spill much. Anyway, this shirt is so old.”

“Sorry, that’s fucking bullshit.”

Yeah. “Sorry, I don’t want to hear ONE. MORE. WORD. about caribou.”