Apologies are A Social Contract
The dirty details are in the assumptions we bring
The difficulty with apologies is one of cognitive isolation. We simply don’t have immediate access to what is going on in the mind of the person doing the apologizing. Frankly, I understated the problem, using “immediate,” when the reality is we never have access to the inner dialogue in all its multi-layered complexity. Because of this isolation or, truly, blindness, we create social rituals to reinforce the likelihood of the genuineness to another person in a given situation. They’re mutually agreed upon behaviors that, once completed, are taken as indicative of the result all parties involved are seeking.
Apologies are tools with which we acknowledge violations of social expectations or norms, take responsibility for the impact of our actions on others, ask their forgiveness, and by doing so, repair ruptures in our relationships, restore our social standing, and ease feelings of guilt. (Guy Winch, Ph.D.)
Notice that in the definition provided by Dr. Winch, there’s no soul-gazing or armchair theorizing of one or another person’s inner state. The entirety of apologies is bound to the social relationship that has been violated and the need for repair. Further, the incentives for engaging in the associated behavior that we call “an apology” are tied again to that sociality and the status connected to it. Several assumptions exist in this status re-appraisal, and those assumptions tend to create the space for a lot of difficulties.
Social Assumptions:
A mutual acknowledgment of relational violation.
From Buzzfeed:
It requires you to center someone else's feelings instead of your own…
The deal is: If you’ve decided to apologize, it means that you’re admitting fault —not fault that might be there depending on how you look at the situation; actual, real fault that exists in the objective reality we all share.
The violation in relationship needs to be acknowledged, but more than a vague declaration is needed, otherwise there’s nothing concrete to build on. This is why I fundamentally don’t agree with the stipulation to “center someone else’s feelings instead of your own.” Not only is this cognitively and biologically impossible to do (none of us are mind-readers and functionally am not sure how that would even work), but it’s horribly unclear as to just what is happening. Feelings aren’t indicative of truth and certainly not of a truth mutually agreed upon. What is needed instead is an active declaration of what was done wrong so that all parties agree.
An agreed-upon set of behaviors that are associated with the label of “apology.”
We’ll get into a list of these behaviors shortly, but we’re focused on the assumptions here first. What is wanted to be seen and heard? Is there a proscribed set of verbiage? With public apologies from celebrities and similar people over the last few years, a boilerplate appeared to be created, and agents and lawyers undoubtedly helped along a copy/paste outline. However, one or another would be met with acceptance or scorn, with the common judgment of disingenuousness or being inauthentic. My favorite mindreading is the declaration of “he/she didn’t mean it,” as if the social media sleuth also had the skills of ship counselor Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Science fiction aside, the behaviors associated with an apology are clearly not enough, or at least only become so when mutually felt to be connected with something more.
Speaking of that list, though, apologies include, according to Dr. Winch, six distinct elements:
Expression of regret
Explanation of what went wrong
Acknowledgment of responsibility
Declaration of repentance
Offer of repair
Request for forgiveness
A mutual acceptance that the behaviors indicate the genuineness of the apology.
Something more is found in the behaviors listed above that, in theory, provide a sense of something real on the part of the person apologizing. Important here is a recognition that this almost entirely has to do with the incentives and biases of all parties involved. We can go back to the celebrity apology as an example, where it becomes quickly apparent that the sex, physical attractiveness, limited publicly made personal history, and likely even acting roles the actor has played are all variables in the judgment of others as to the authenticity of the apology. Indeed, when it comes to physical attractiveness, there’s a direct connection to continued levels of trust given to the person, according to one study out of Cornell University. In a recent example, the attractiveness of Luigi Mangione, an unrepentant murderer, has received over $300,000 in crowd-funding and numerous marriage proposals.
As often comes up with therapy clients, the meaning of behavior is in the eye of the beholder, and trust is as much a choice as anything objective. We all know of people connected to someone repeatedly breaking their word, yet the person closest to them will still fall for every failed promise. Yet, someone else who has a history of trustworthiness will be treated with utter disdain and automatic assumptions of guilt, regardless of any actual data. When it comes to judgments about the underlying “truth” behind a person’s behavior, quite often, we become poor imitations of characters on a murder procedural show, thinking we can plumb the depths of the inner psyche when really we’re just blindly following our uncritical assumptions and biases.
A reciprocal appreciation that the behaviors help in relationship repair.
“Apologize to your sister right now!” Seems that parents instill this into us from a young age, the idea that particular behaviors are set up for the repair of relationships. That somehow, due to a socially established ritual, the ephemeral nature of a relationship has gone from damaged to healed. Yet, we know this isn’t true. As stated above, trust is in no small part a choice, rationalized through a story of judgment that itself is offered up in our consciousness with very little in the way of critical reflection. The words of an apology aren’t magic, yet they’re often treated as such, resulting in people having further difficulty when their feelings aren’t changed. Repairing a relationship takes work; hence, there is a need for social rituals, but such is only the beginning of a process that, in the long term, requires more objective and time-sensitive behaviors to accomplish.
The repair is two-fold: restoring social standing (outer) and easing guilt (inner)
Those longer-term behaviors touch on the duality of our existence: the social status games that we all play and the phenomenological or personal consciousness stories that we tell ourselves. Apologies and their accompanying behavior provide the socially-proscribed space to move from one state in a relationship with another person or group to another. Consider just what apologies are doing in practice, once we remove the magic from it. It’s a behavior that results in an expanded potential for the person to interact with others. That’s why social shaming (at least until recently) was so powerful, it constrained a person’s interactive potential as others wouldn’t trust the person to engage with. An apology “heals” the rift by providing a means to relationally move from isolation to interaction.
That sense of isolation and constrained behavioral potential is what guilt is largely about. It’s the feeling associated with estrangement, from disconnection. Apologies, the behavior that is associated with them, and the response to it, is a way to assuage that feeling of disconnect. This is why people get angry when they’ve gone through the motions of an apology and are met with dismissal. If they feel themselves to be sincere and that sincerity isn’t accepted, such refusal isn’t just personal, it cuts off the potential for the person to reconnect and live their life. This isn’t a push to blindly accept apologies, it’s simply a point to recognize the weight associated with the practice.
The Weight of An Apology
The behavior associated with apologies are a lot like traffic signals. They rely on a collective acquiescence to their imagined power. If enough people dismiss their importance, apologies no longer are a behavior people will feel inclined to engage in, any more than they would stop at signs and signals (and isn’t it interesting that “signs” and “signals” are exactly the same words we use to describe behavior?). That social inclination is why it’s so important to be reflectively aware of the behaviors we’re engaging in, because so much of the health of society is based on a great many blindly accepted customs, which if taken for granted, become easier to dismiss their influence.
However, for apologies to be effective, they have to be focused on the other person’s needs and feelings, not your own. (Guy Winch, Ph.D.)
With all due respect to Dr. Winch, I have to disagree with this statement, or at least offer a caveat. For apologies to be effective, they have to be focused on how our own needs are being met through relationships with others. Again, apologies aren’t magic, and uttering words or behavioral hand-waving does not necessitate a change in the other person’s feelings or judgment. What apologies are is a recognition of the reality of our relational existence and the needs we all have that are met through relating in and with others.
As I explain to my clients, it is simply never the case that one person can enter into the mind of another, to feel another’s feelings or know their thoughts. Every relationship, of whatever kind, is a Venn diagram of which will never be a perfect circle, of one’s internal representation of the other and who the other person actually is. Dialogue and reflective critical thinking helps us to bridge the gap, but it is never perfect. Apologies are one set of behaviors, among many, that help people connect the internal vision of someone with who they believe themselves to be.
An apology is just one step, significant as it can be, in the ongoing interactive relational existence of which we are all engaged in every moment of every day of our lives. Consider carefully how you engage in this, among other, social rituals, because we cannot and do not live healthy lives in states of disconnection.