Why are apologies so frequently unfulfilling?

They’re seen as status as opposed to learning.

So what’s a perfect apology?

If person W says “I was wrong, you were right”, our immediate reaction is that the right person (R) is better, smarter, and will gloat. W is humiliated, proven ignorant.

That’s why those in the wrong don’t want to acknowledge it, and hence mutter sorry

R hears muttering, and doesn’t think W really means it. So she’s not satisfied either.

But why? R did get an apology.

It’s because the point of the apology is to make sure it won’t happen again.

What R wants to hear is not sorry. It’s: “If in the future the same circumstances happen, I will not react the same way. We will avoid this problem.”

What R wants to hear, in other words, is learning. A half-assed utterance does not convey learning.

W, meanwhile, doesn’t want to appear weak. They don’t want to lower their status. What’s a way to solve that?

R should not gloat or treat it as a personal win. Rather, it should be seen as a mutual win: the same conflict won’t happen again.

So what’s a perfect apology?

W must take the first step. They were wrong. They must say sorry and then explain in detail how they see the problem emerging and what their specific mistake was.

Odds are, R and W won’t, in fact, see eye to eye in what the pbm was. So they’ll engage in a dissection of the event

That dissection is gold. It’s where the leaning comes from. It should be seen as a great joint pbm-solving opportunity.

Once R and W agree on what went poorly, they will both be satisfied: They’ve either both learned, or they’re sure one of them has learned the right lesson