When Bill Clinton, once seen as our most empathetic president (though nowadays the 1993 headline in The Onion, “New President Feels Nation’s Pain, Breasts” seems more resonant) said, “I’m sorry about the rain” to an audience awaiting his speech, he communicated that he understood their perspective (dampness!), that he recognized the adversity they were coping with, that he was attuned to and thinking about their feelings and experiences. Such “superfluous apologies” display empathy, and empathy has a positive impact on relationships. Charts on the Internet suggest multiple things to say in multiple situations instead of “I’m sorry.”Ī 2013 study called “I’m Sorry About the Rain! Superfluous Apologies Demonstrate Empathic Concern and Increase Trust,” published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, found that when you apologize for stuff you’re not responsible for - the weather, the traffic, the fact that Tim Horton’s was out of the maple dip - you create a connection with the person you’re apologizing to. Women are constantly informed by people who have not researched apology that they apologize too much.
Raindrops keep faling full#
(Here, we’ll do it: “Oh gosh, that moose ate your Timbit, sorry!” and “Pip pip cheerio, terribly sorry someone drove a lorry full of chips into the lift! Arsenal! Tottenham Hotspur!”) Americans love to mock Canadian and British people for their lily-livered, knee-jerk, obsessive apologizing. Our last president resolutely refused to apologize for anything for four years. Conventional wisdom holds that apologies make you look weak.
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