Whether it’s bumping into someone when getting on the train to stopping an argument with a significant other, it seems that women are always the first ones to say “I’m sorry.”
While some of us are just being knee-jerk polite, two new studies actually suggest that we’re more likely to apologize in most situations than men — only not for the reasons you might think.
A study that monitored the conversations of 66 male and female subjects over the course of a 12-day period found that women said “sorry” significantly more often than men. However, researchers who also asked subjects to report mistakes and offenses they’d made during that time period discovered that women reported more than their male counterparts.
Its just that men have a higher threshold for what they think warrants reparation, the scientists said. When researchers looked at the number of apologies relative to the number of offences the participants perceived they had committed, they saw no differences between the genders.
"Men are't actively resisting apologizing because they think it will make them appear weak or because they don't want to take responsibility for their actions," said studies. "It seems to be that when they think they've done something wrong they do apologize just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong. Its just that they think they've done fewer things wrong,"
The findings might have implications for how men and women communicate with each other. Also adding to their study did not find any evidence to back the assumption that women are more apologetic sex. Schumann and her colleagues conducted two studies to see if genders do indeed differ in how often they apologize, and if so , why this might be.
By the study and survey they have done says that women apologized more and reported committing more offensive acts, but both men and women apologized about 81 % of the time when they deemed their actions offensive.
Men think they make fewer mistakes
To reach at this conclusion, lead researcher Karina Schumann, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University, and her colleagues conducted two studies to see if men and women differ in how often they apologize.
The study looked at the number of apologies relative to the number of offenses the participants perceived they had committed and found no differences between the genders. "Men aren't actively resisting apologising because they think it will make them appear weak or because they don't want to take responsibility for their actions," said study researcher Schumann.
"It seems to be that when they think they've done something wrong they do apologise just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong.
It's just that they think they've done fewer things wrong," Schumann was quoted as saying by LiveScience.
Researchers also kept a track of how often they felt someone had committed an offensive act against them that required reparation.
It was found that women tend to apologize more and reported committing more offensive acts, but both men and women apologized about 81 percent of the time when they deemed their actions went offensive.
But, men were found to be less likely to report being victims of wrongdoing, researchers said.
For the second study, 120 undergraduates were enrolled to rate how severe they thought a particular offense was. For instance, they had to recall if they woke their friend up late at night, and because of the sleep disturbance, the friend did poorly on an interview the next day.
Interestingly, here also, women rated the offenses as more severe than men did, and women were also more likely to admit the friend deserved an apology.
"Neither men nor women are wrong when they disagree about whether or not an offence has occurred or whether or not an apology is desired," Schumann said. "It's just that they have different perceptions of an event that has occurred between them."
The studies, published in the journal ‘Psychological Science,’ were conducted on small scale and involved only university students, so the findings might not be applicable to all men and women in general, the researchers concluded.
