Sorry for Whatever

A similar version is “If I did anything wrong, I apologise for it and am sincerely sorry”. The problem with that version is that the speaker is only conditionally apologising, and so cannot really be sincere (again, because they don’t know and/or haven’t bothered to find out, whatever it is that is wrong). The speaker, and the listener, haven’t come to agreement over what was wrong; taken quasi-literally, the speaker is apologising for nothing, which is cheap. Your version is not too different: to your listener, you’re not actually apologising, because you don’t know what to apologise for. You’re expressing regret, with an implicit promise to do better in future, but since you don’t know what you did wrong, that’s near meaningless.

You consider and dismiss “figuring out how you upset someone is easy”. But perhaps the situation is that figuring it out is indeed difficult – and they want you to go through that process; your bothering to expend the effort to work it out is some proof that you’re genuinely sorry; giving in too quickly and asking them for the solution is… like the comparable situation with homework.

Most of them seemed to assume, despite my warning, that figuring out how you upset someone is easy.  And that’s patently untrue.

I think it’s patently true that people usually understand why/how they’ve upset others.

Sometimes they won’t realise they have but once they do it will be clear why. Sometimes they won’t agree it’s worth being upset or they did anything wrong. But almost always they’ll understand why.

I think most people above misunderstand Bryan’s question.  I see two main mistakes going on:

First, there’s a smuggling of a conditional in that doesn’t exist in Bryan’s original question.  It’s not “*If* I offended you…”.  There is no conditional.  The speaker is accepting that he caused offense and injury and apologizes for causing the harm.

Second, there’s questioning the motive.  The person is being sincere.  They are not belittling or copping out.

Now, to Sarah and KevinDC’s points, I think they get to the heart of the issue: the person’s injury isn’t really being explicitly acknowledged.  Acknowledging the injury head on helps resolve the ambiguity that I think shows up in the two mistakes I mention above.

Adam Smith discusses how when we are injured, we have a tendency to not impartially view it.  So, in the immediate aftermath of the injury, neither party is really in the best position to discuss why the event caused the reaction it did.  In the “cooler hours,” when we have had time to reflect, that is the time to discuss.  As I understand Sarah, that is her point; the question comes at an inappropriate time.

It’s a self evidently untrue statement. You can’t actually be sorry if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be sorry for. You’re lying about being sorry.

Because the response does not dissolve the cognitive dissonance they are feeling.
One feels upset when one thinks you are treating them unfairly or taking advantage of them or being a jerk.
As to why they don’t tell you this- maybe they know that you are such a jerk and will not understand or take it. Or their position is weak – everything doesn’t have to be reasonable and cannot be argued. So dissonance continues and they are trapped in it.
(And as you are not getting it and creating such a thread – you must be quite a jerk yourself – try being empathetic)

There are two things going on here.

First of all, Agnes Callard was right. We teach our kids the five steps of an effective apology. As this Psychology Today article states:

This formulation implies that for an apology to be effective it must have the following key ingredients:

A clear “I’m sorry” statement.

An expression of regret for what happened.

An acknowledgment that social norms or expectations were violated.

An empathy statement acknowledging the full impact of our actions on the other person.

A request for forgiveness.

You’ll never successfully convey parts 3 and 4 if you don’t understand what you did wrong. So, it’s your responsibility to acquire that knowledge, by humbly asking the person you’ve wronged, by listening to what they have to say, and by incorporating it into your apology.

The second thing that’s going on is something I noticed in your previous post about betting and Tyler Cowen. You (Caplan) are an assertive communicator: you say exactly what you mean, you mean exactly what you say, and you say things politely, clearly, and confidently. That is the ideal form of effective and mentally healthy communication.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are passive communicators. They don’t come out and say what they mean at all. Instead, they drop hints and hope the other person figures it out on their own (or they say and do things for “Straussian reasons”). If the other person fails to pick up all the hints and understand them correctly, they tend to resent the other person for not getting it.

Passive communication isn’t just a preference or a style. It’s an incredibly destructive, disharmonious way to communicate. People who rely on passive communication are typically miserable or at least extremely uncomfortable in situations when they must convey their true meaning on uncomfortable topics. They are often “people-pleasers” who can’t say no to anything. Sometimes they are even covert narcissists. In short, passive communication is a real problem, just as bad as overly aggressive people who shout and argue all the time.

So, to sum up: It’s your responsibility to assertively communicate with someone to find out why they’re upset with you, and to try to rectify things, starting with a proper, 5-ingredient apology. But it’s the responsibility of the other person to clearly communicate why they are upset. If they can’t – or won’t – then they have an unreasonable expectation of you to read their minds and decode all their hints. But reading their feelings and thoughts isn’t your responsibility; it’s their responsibility to convey them.

In my experience “I don’t really understand what I did to upset you, but I’m sincerely sorry for whatever it was” is very often used insincerely, so people react negatively even if it were to be sincere.

Hi Bryan

Part of the problem is the following. You say that “It costs me nothing”

Suppose you have morally wronged someone. You thereby damage the moral relationship that exists between you and the wronged party is damaged. Likewise you also damage your status within the moral community. If you were entitled to forgiveness, that is if you were entitled to having your relations with the wronged party restored to normal by performing some costless action, then your relation isn’t really worth much. But that cannot be right.

Restoring the moral relationship with someone requires you to send a reliable signal of contrition. However, costless signals are easily faked and hence unreliable.

However, you are asking for apologising to be objectionably easy. If they just tell you what you should apologise for, then it is easy for you to apologise. If you just apologise generically without putting in sufficient effort to figure out where you went wrong, you are basically saying that you are entitled to have your moral status costlessly restored. But, per hypothesis, you are not entitled to that. Also, doing so expresses disrespect for the person you have wronged because it expresses the claim that she is not entitled to more than an easy apology, that the thing you did wasn’t that wrong anyway.

That’s why the other party will remain angry and refuse to tell you what you did wrong.

First, if you don’t understand what upset them, then you cannot commit to not doing it again, which means it cannot really be a sincere apology. You can’t acknowledge a wrong if you don’t know what it is.

Second, it’s a test – you have to figure out what it is that upset them, in order for them to know that you actually understood it. If they have to explain it to you, then they can’t be sure you fully grasp what the problem is. You might just repeat back to them their words. They can only know for sure you understand, and therefore that the apology is sincere, if you figure out why what you did hurt them on your own.

Actually I think we need to go one step further to what Agnes said. The offended party wants understanding yes, but what they really want is for you to be able to understand them in every thing and in every way: you are their partner and you have deeply known them for a long time, so they expect you to be able to know and understand them, what they think, feel, need etc. If you don’t, then they interpret it as a sign that you might not be the right person for them, or you don’t put enough effort for the partner, or you are not any closer to them than a random person in the street. Is this interpreation from the offended party correct then? Of course not, as often we struggle to understand ourselves, let alone other people.

“I don’t really understand what I did to upset you, but I’m sincerely sorry for whatever it was.”

I think one reason the recipient might take offense is that the speaker has devoted two clauses to explaining that the speaker doesn’t comprehend how she has offended the receiver. This could be read to imply that (a) maybe the offense wasn’t legitimate and (b) that the speaker has not educated herself on what was offensive.

Bryan’s response is that a lot of sources of offense are very obscure, and the offended should have more empathy for people who offend them, but when a person is offended, they’re not necessarily in the best emotional state for that.

As a hypothetical, let’s suppose that one day in history class, student X discusses the oppression of the Huguenots in terms that strongly offend Y (a Huguenot descendant) and Z (a French Catholic descendant). X feels that her terms were neutral and historical, both Y and Z feel that the language used was offensive and that any reasonable person would know it.  Y and Z both approach X at separate times letting her know her terms were offensive.

In this context, “I don’t really understand what I did to upset you” and “whatever it was” imply (a) that maybe once X understood, X would feel Y or Z’s offense was unreasonable, (b) that X won’t take steps to prevent further offense.  Bryan may well be right that X can’t reasonably know how she offended Y and Z, but that’s not any comfort to Y or Z.