Should Women Stop Saying “I’m Sorry?”

Psychological research indicates that women apologize more than men. But do women really apologize too much, or is there more to the story? Find out the truth behind the feminine “over-apology,” and what to do about it.

Research Finds Differences Between Men and Women in How They Apologize

In the past several years, there has been an enormous amount of media coverage, how-to articles, and pop culture references to women saying “I’m sorry” too much. There was a Pantene commercial that went viral in 2014, an episode of Inside Amy Schumer in 2015, there’s even a Google Chrome plugin called “Just Not Sorry” that acts as spell-check for the passive voice, and countless “how-to” articles aimed at women with advice on apologizing less.  

But where is all of this coming from? 

It appears that the tsunami of media coverage on women over-apologizing comes from a couple of studies from the University of Waterloo in Ontario.  In the first study, 33 men and women kept daily diaries and recorded each time they caused or felt an offense. Participants also wrote down whether an apology was issued.  In this study, women were more likely to apologize for their own actions. However, men were just as likely as women to apologize, if they believed they done something wrong.  

In a follow up study, participants imagined committing offenses such as being rude to a friend for showing up late, and whether they would apologize or not.  The men reported that they would apologize less frequently, and the researchers concluded that the men had a higher threshold for what they considered an offense worthy of an apology.  

The Narrative “Women Apologize Too Much” Is Born 

The business world is a male-dominated environment. There are more CEOs named John than there are female CEOs with any name in the S&P 1500. As a result, men are often considered “normal” or the default, and the media constructs the narrative that women need to change to be more like men. 

Some media coverage even goes so far as to assume that there is something pathological about women apologizing too much, simply because men do it less. Advice such as “reflect on how your childhood or early development may be contributing to your knee-jerk tendency to over-apologize” might be well-meaning, but ultimately furthers the false narrative that there is something wrong with women because they are different than men. 

However, the differences in the way and frequency that men and women apologize are cultural, not due to some inadequacy on the part of women. Consider that it is customary in Japan for both parties to apologize after a car accident, even when one party is clearly at fault. To conclude that the tendency to apologize is a result of deep psychological insecurities of Japanese people rather than simply a cultural custom is both absurd and offensive. Yet, the feminine tendency to apologize is often attributed to insecurities of women rather than a cultural difference. 

The original study does not support the conclusion that there is something wrong with the amount of apologizing that women do. The study’s original author, Karina Schumann, states that “neither men nor women are wrong when they disagree about whether or not an offense has occurred or whether or not an apology is desired. It's just that they have different perceptions of an event that has occurred between them."

The tendency for women to apologize more is part of larger linguistic differences between men and women. Women tend to have more tentative speech patterns than men, and are more likely to use hedges, qualifiers, and disclaimers such as “kind of” or “I’m not sure if this is right.” These tentative speech patterns serve an important purpose: to avoid conflict. It’s likely a tactic women employ to navigate the communication double-bind that all women face in the workplace: communicate in a stereotypically feminine manner and be viewed as less competent, or mimic stereotypically masculine communication styles and be considered overly aggressive. Women do not need remedial masculinity training to succeed in business. Because these speech patterns serve an important purpose, it isn’t helpful to tell women that they should drop the tentative speech patterns and communicate more like men.