Hidden Brain Podcast: Why Is It So Hard For Us To Say, "I'm Sorry"

 Hidden Brain (created and hosted by Shankar Vedantam) is billed as a podcast that "explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world."

In almost every episode, Vedantam takes long-standing beliefs we hug like a "child's blankie"  and carefully strips away at our fortress of misconceptions. 

Hidden Brain acts as a sonic mirror, coaxing us to re-consider our emotional core, and intellectual scaffolding.  

In his November 27th episode, Healing 2.0: The Power of Apologies, host Shankar Vedantam talks with University of Queensland Professor, psychologist Tyler Okimoto.

During the nearly hour-long episode, Vedantam and Okimoto discuss key issues surrounding "the apology" in our social structure.

The reason I've highlighted this episode is that somehow we've lost the ability to apologize in our society. Politicians caught in lies double down on their falsehoods, even when caught with their proverbial pants down. (You know who they are). People in our daily lives transform into "Karens" and "Kevins," asserting their constitutional rights and trampling on those of other people.

The episode began with Shankar Vedantam saying, "I'm sorry is one of the first things parents teach their children. So why is it so hard for grownups to apologize?"

Tyler Okimoto responds: ": Well, I think we've probably all experienced the urge to not apologize. One of the things that happens when you apologize is, actually, you are relinquishing a bit of power and control in that situation. By admitting that you've done something wrong, by saying that you're sorry, in a way, you're handing over the opportunity for forgiveness to the other person. So it's no longer in my control to decide whether I'm a person of good moral standing. It's now in your hands for you to decide whether I'm worthy of forgiveness."

Okimoto goes on to make a disturbing point: "We did in the research is really try to understand why that boost occurred. And what we found was that when you've refused to apologize, it gives you a bit of a feeling of increased power and control in that situation, and at the same time, by digging in and saying, 'No, no, I've done the right thing,' it actually gives a bit of a boost to your feelings of integrity as well."

Both host and guest agree that one of the things that people are really looking for in an apology is a sincere belief that the individual who's apologizing is remorseful for their actions. In fact, judgments of remorse and sincerity of that remorse are really influential in changing whether people are willing to forgive after an apology.

"There's really two aspects to the reconciliation process," observes Professor Okimoto. "There's the backward-looking, trying to make sense and come to a shared understanding about what happened, trying to understand the other person's perspective on what happens, trying to share your own perspective on what happened and come to some agreement about what the offense was itself and what my responsibility was in that. Then the other half of it is the forward-thinking, the future-focused aspect of the apology, which is, really, what's going to happen from now on. What people are often looking for is a promise of future behavior and some action that begins to evidence your willingness to move towards that future behavior."

 Apologies can help to rebuild the relationship, re-establish the agreement, what the relationship is based on, or they can transmit power and control to the other party. They give the other party the option to forgive. They communicate that degrading you was the wrong thing to do. The apology is often the starting point to the conversation.

Most people who apologize wrongly assume that forgiveness is immediate and complete, when, in fact, it's a process that requires patience and understanding on both sides.

Okimoto continues: "Now that you've actually admitted that something is wrong, now we can talk about the right way to move forward. And so it's perhaps not surprising that victim groups are not immediately forgiving in the face of an apology because the apology is an opening, and it's the first step in moving forward towards real reconciliation."

 As athlete Ashley Sexton once said, "Sorry doesn’t prove anything unless you mean it."