Count how many times you said sorry yesterday. Not the apologies that mattered. The other ones. Sorry for sending that email. Sorry for asking a question. Sorry for existing in the same space as someone who briefly had to walk around you.
If you live in an English-speaking country, particularly if you are a woman, the number is probably higher than you think. And the research on what that habit does to you is not what you expect.
The story is more complicated than “stop apologising.” In fact, one study suggests that apologising for things that are not your fault can actually increase trust. But chronic, reflexive over-apologising, the kind that has become a verbal tic rather than a genuine social gesture, does something else entirely. It quietly signals to everyone around you that you do not believe you have the right to take up space.
Over-apologising can desensitise the people around you to your sincere apologies. The more you say sorry, the less it means. If everything rises to the need for an apology, nothing does.
Let’s start with the piece of research that complicates the picture. In 2013, a team from Harvard Business School and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania ran a field study at a train station on a rainy day. An actor approached strangers and asked to borrow their phone. Half the time, he opened with: “I’m so sorry about the rain. Can I borrow your phone?” The other half of the time, he simply asked.
Forty-seven percent of the people who received the apology handed over their phone. Only nine percent of the people who received the direct request did.
The researchers called these “superfluous apologies,” expressions of regret for circumstances entirely outside your control. What they found was that acknowledging someone else’s discomfort, even when you had nothing to do with causing it, signals empathy. And empathy, it turns out, creates trust faster than almost anything else you can do in a social interaction.
So apologising for the rain works. The problem is what happens when you cannot stop.
There is a meaningful difference between an apology that communicates empathy and an apology that communicates self-doubt. One builds connection. The other erodes authority. Most chronic over-apologisers are doing the second without knowing it.
Fast Company, drawing on behavioural research, put it plainly: habitual apologising can undermine your authority, portray you as weak and indecisive, and damage your credibility. These are not minor social costs. In professional settings particularly, the person who prefaces every statement with “sorry” is read differently from the one who speaks directly. The content of what they say may be identical. The reception is not.
There is also what researchers call the desensitisation effect. An apology is a social signal that carries meaning only because it is relatively rare. When you apologise for everything, the signal loses its frequency. The people around you stop registering it. And when you need to issue a genuine apology, one that matters, for something you actually did, the word has already been spent. You have used it so many times that it no longer carries weight.
David De Cremer, a Dutch psychologist who has studied the mechanics of apology extensively, found that people consistently overestimate how much a received apology will heal a damaged relationship. We imagine an apology as a reset button. Research shows it is more like a first step that we treat as a final one. The apology we give too easily is both overvalued and underweighted at the same time.
Research by De Cremer found that people who imagined receiving an apology reported more satisfaction than people who actually received one. We have built an apology culture around a social tool that does not deliver what we expect from it, and we are wearing it out faster than we can replace it.
So why do people over-apologise? The psychology is fairly consistent. Low self-esteem, social anxiety, and what researchers call the Spotlight Effect, the cognitive distortion that leads you to believe everyone is watching and judging your mistakes as closely as you are, all drive reflexive apologising. It is a way of managing fear. By apologising preemptively, you reduce the risk of conflict, criticism, or disapproval. The problem is that the strategy works in the short term and costs you in the long one.
What to do instead? The research suggests two things. First, distinguish between an apology that communicates empathy, which the Harvard study shows genuinely works, and an apology that communicates self-diminishment. “I’m sorry about the rain” says: I notice your discomfort and I care about it. “Sorry for asking” says: I do not believe my question deserves to be heard. Only one of these is doing anything useful.
Second, replace reflexive apologies with direct acknowledgement. Instead of “sorry for interrupting,” try “I want to add something here.” Instead of “sorry if this is a stupid question,” try the question. The content is the same. What changes is the message you send about your right to take up space in the conversation.
The word sorry has not lost its power. You have just been spending it in places where it does not belong.
Now you know. The question is what you do with it. Marco Bellinari
The rabbit hole goes deeper. Go further. It is worth it.
Thank you for reading. Every fact in this article is documented and sourced. You will find the references at the bottom if you want to dig further. I hope it surprised you at least once. That is always the intention.
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