It can be difficult to find the right words to show you really mean it when you apologise. But there are linguistic cues you can use to get your message across. My recent research suggests that the length of the words that we choose influences how sincere the apology seems.
Author
- Shiri Lev-Ari
Reader in Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London
Apologies are often described as "cheap talk" - anyone can say they're sorry, regardless of how they actually feel. But apologies work. Research shows that people feel better and are more likely to cooperate again with someone who wronged them if the person apologised.
One way to make an apology more persuasive is to make it more costly. When apologisers are willing to incur a cost in the form of spending money, effort, or time, their apology is better received.
A 2009 study found people seemed to be more convinced by apologies that the apologiser had to spend money to deliver than by ones that could be delivered at no cost. Similarly, that study found that apologies are more convincing if the transgressor inconvenienced themselves to deliver the message, such as by showing up to an early class that they are not enrolled in to apologise to their friend rather than apologising at the next convenient opportunity.
There are other ways to make an effort when you apologise though. A word's length and commonness affect how hard it is to say or write. Longer words require more articulation. Uncommon words are harder to remember and to say or write. So, if someone wants to express their regret by making greater effort in their apology, they could use longer and less common words.
At the same time, uncommon words are also harder to understand, meaning they burden the recipient as well as the transgressor. But longer words that are not uncommon aren't usually harder to understand. They tend to be more distinct than other words, which means they might even be easier to understand. A sophisticated apologiser, then, might select longer but not rarer words - making the apology harder for themselves, but not harder for the recipient.
I conducted two studies to investigate the role of word length and word commonness in apologies. One analysed real-world apologies, and one tested people's perceptions of apologies with words of different length and commonness.
In the first study, I used apology tweets from X (formerly Twitter) written by 25 celebrities and 25 non-celebrities. These apology tweets were compared to other tweets from the same users. My results showed that apology tweets consisted of longer words than the non-apology tweets. They did not differ in word commonness though.
In a second study I examined whether people perceived apologies with longer or less common words as more apologetic. Participants were presented with triads of apologies that had the same meaning but differed in either word length or word commonness.
Example one:
My action does not show who I am (short, common)
My action does not reflect my true self (short, less common)
My action does not represent my true character (long, less common)
Example two:
I did not mean to answer in a hostile way (short, common)
I did not mean to reply in a combative style (short, less common)
I did not mean to respond in a confrontational manner (long, less common)
Participants were presented with the sentences in the triad in a random order and they ranked them from most to least apologetic. The results showed that participants graded the sentences with longer words as more apologetic than the sentences with short words that were matched for commonness. In contrast, word commonness did not influence how apologetic the sentences seemed.
The results of the two studies align: people use longer words when apologising and perceive apologies with longer words as more apologetic. But apologies that employ uncommon words don't seem to have the same effect. In other words, people seem to express their regret by delivering apologies that are harder for them to say or write but not harder for the addressees to understand.
My research shows how we convey messages not only via the meaning of the words we use but also via the form of the words. It also shows how the form of a word (in this case, its length) can express contextual meaning. That is, the word "character" does not have an apologetic meaning in general, but in the context of an apology, its length symbolises effort and may be interpreted as expressing greater remorse. So if now you cannot stop humming Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word , I am unequivocally and exceedingly remorseful.
Shiri Lev-Ari receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.
