Can I ask you a personal question?

🫤 When “sorry” is not just a word

If you’re like us, there’s a pretty good chance you often find yourself saying “sorry” throughout the day without even realizing it. At the slightest hint of inconveniencing someone, it might just slip out. There’s also a good chance that you’ve been told that you should really stop doing that. According to a 2022 YouGov survey, we – women – are 10% more likely than men to “apologize or accept blame when [we’re] not at fault.” Similarly, we’re 14% more likely to consider ourselves people-pleasers, with 56% of us self-characterizing as such. A study from UC Santa Cruz involving over 3,500 participants found that women were also more likely to use tentative forms of speech, such as qualifiers, disclaimers, and questions. Another study conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo found that women apologize more frequently than men because men “have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior.” 

So.. sure, we do it more, but is something wrong with that? Well, linguists like Deborah Tannen of Georgetown University have argued that those who make “frequent ritual apologies may end up appearing weaker, less confident, and literally more blameworthy than people who don’t." While women may say sorry to express concern or establish rapport, Tannen notes, men may avoid apologies because they feel it implies an inferior status of the speaker. So perhaps not surprisingly, women are nearly twice as likely as men to say that being a people-pleaser has made life harder and that they dislike being thought of as such. We’re also 10% more likely to answer yes when asked if we “struggle to establish boundaries with others” and “feel responsible for how other people feel.” As a recent Time article warns, internalizing the dynamics of this overly apologetic, people-pleasing behavior may have grave consequences: “the very virtues our culture rewards in women — agreeability, extreme selflessness, and suppression of anger — may predispose us to chronic illness and disease.”

Not sorry? Not so fast…

“Okay, well then I’ll just ditch the apologies,” you may be thinking to yourself. But before you do that, you should also know that the other side of the spectrum can be a minefield of its own for women. A meta-analysis of research on dominant behavior exhibited in women concluded the following: “dominance indeed hurts women’s, relative to men’s, likability… as well as more downstream outcomes such as hireability... More important, however, dominance expressed explicitly (e.g., direct demands) affected women’s likability… whereas implicit forms of dominance (e.g., eye contact) did not.” Back in the world of linguistics, Stanford scholar Katherine Hilton uncovered similarly startling (irritating? infuriating?) perceptions in a survey of 5,000 American English speakers. When played audio clips containing interruptions, “male listeners were more likely to view women who interrupted another speaker in the audio clips as ruder, less friendly and less intelligent than men who interrupted.” In another study by economists at Middlebury College, when male and female names were randomly assigned to workers’ performance assessments, both women and men “reported that criticism by a woman led to a larger reduction in job satisfaction than criticism by a man” and were “doubly disinterested in working for the company in the future if they had been criticized by a female boss.”

Cue the Barbie being-a-women-is-impossible monologue

It’s hard not to read these studies and think no wonder women are apologizing more, especially in the workplace; we’re walking an insanely fine line to do our jobs and just not offend anyone. So why is this the case? Well, a leading explanation is that society has significantly higher expectations for women when it comes to qualities like empathy and agreeableness. A 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center asked over 4,500 Americans which traits they thought society valued most in men and women. For men, the top three were honesty/morality (33%), professional/financial success (23%), and ambition/leadership (19%). For women? Physical attractiveness (35%... womp… maybe give our recent deep dive into the cost of looks a read if you haven’t already), empathy/nurturing/kindness (30%), and intelligence (22%).

There’s a lot to unpack here, but we’ll focus on the second-most valued trait in women: empathy/nurturing/kindness. In many ways, this makes sense. Women account for up to 81% of caregivers and spend roughly 50% more time caregiving than men. Many researchers argue that stress responses in women do not follow the standard fight-or-flight pattern we’ve all heard of, but rather a tend-and-befriend model that involves nurturing others and creating social support networks. In fact, we’re neurologically wired to behave prosocially, thanks to our dopaminergic reward system. And as it turns out, apologizing in scenarios in which the apologizer is not culpable but says “I’m sorry” anyway actually “demonstrates empathic concern for the victim and increases the victim’s trust in the apologizer.”

Maybe I’m not sorry that I’m sorry?

Inevitably, these superior prosocial tendencies have led to higher expectations for prosocial behavior in women than in men. One 2017 study drove this point home: when self-confidence was paired with strong job performance, it “directly enabled men to exert influence in their organization. In contrast, high-performing women gained influence only when their self-confidence… was coupled with prosocial orientation.” The question of why women are so often faced with mixed messages and double standards when it comes to apologizing now seems to have a clearer answer.

But with that answer, perhaps it is also time to rethink the characterization of an apologetic disposition. Perhaps what society considers over-apologizing, even in cases of minor transgression or truly no fault at all, may be much more than just a weakness. Perhaps it is actually a tool used by women – subconsciously or not – to build relationships with those around them, especially if those around them are predisposed to react negatively to their assertiveness.

Let us know what you think by voting in our poll and leaving an anonymous comment.

  💭 Our two cents

As evidenced by the slew of apologies at the top of the page, the target audience for this post is very much myself. In my own experience, I’ve found multiple different aspects of the research above to be true: (1) I think I apologize more – especially at work – than my average male peer, and (2) I worry that my apologies can be too self-deprecating and undermine others’ perceptions of me, but (3) I also feel that my apologies are born out of consideration for what others may be experiencing. When I first started exploring this topic, I expected the research to lead me to a much harsher critique of my apologetic tendencies, but perhaps there is more to that third point than I originally thought…

By some combination of biology and sociology, women demonstrate remarkable levels of empathy and kindness. This prosocial behavior is definitely not something to be ashamed of, and our gut reaction to offer up an “I’m sorry” without thinking twice is almost certainly wired into that. So at the very least, recognizing the root of these sometimes excessive apologies is helpful. And as we saw above, being perceived as prosocial can be critical to advancing in certain aspects of our lives; even if we think it’s ridiculous that men aren’t held to the same standard, most of us would say that being kind is a good thing.

Tips for saying sorry less

However, we owe it to ourselves to not let frequent apologies inadvertently put ourselves down in others’ eyes or, more importantly, our own. And in many cases, “I’m sorry” can be replaced with an equally kind but dramatically less fault-focused option, such as a thank you or a question. Here are a few examples:

• “So sorry to keep you waiting.” => “Thanks so much for your patience.”

• “Sorry to bother you again but I was wondering about X.” => “Hi! When would be a good time to chat about X?”

• “Sorry if this is a dumb question but why is X?” => “Would you mind clarifying X?”

These sorts of alternatives don’t force you to choose between kindness and assertiveness. They’re not apologies, but they’re certainly still friendly and show a consideration for the person you’re addressing. Working these options into our day-to-day vocabulary seems like a no-brainer, and something that I’ll definitely be working on myself. To end, consider this quote from Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author and professor at Wharton, who wrote an essay last year closely related to this topic. As you think about your own use of apologetic vs. assertive language, you might find it’s worth keeping in mind:

 ✅ You should also know…

👆 Opinion: If that last quote spoke to you, check out Adam Grant’s full New York Times op-ed “Women Know Exactly What They’re Doing When They Use ‘Weak Language’”.

🤭 Comedy: Now seems as good a time as ever to revisit Amy Schumer’s 2015 “I’m Sorry” skit from Inside Amy Schumer for a laugh… and maybe a cringe or a tear.

 📝 Words: If you found the linguistic research cited in this week’s post as interesting as we did, this article by Deborah Tannen, “The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why”, is worth the longer read.

💃 The girls have spoken

Last week, we covered egg freezing in our So…should I freeze my eggs? piece. Since then, I’ve had several thought-provoking conversations about the topic. First, here’s how the votes shook out: 

• 22% of us have either already frozen our eggs or are 100% in. To think that almost a quarter of us are doing this goes to show that it really is becoming mainstream.

• And that number may end up being even higher! Another 40% of us are starting to explore it. While we may not choose to go through with it, the fact that over 60% of us as a whole are either committed to or intrigued by egg freezing demonstrates just how much women are craving more choice when it comes to our timelines and our bodies.

We also learned from you…

I also want to call attention to two interesting comments that were posted by readers. The first deals with the ethics around employer-sponsored egg freezing as it could send a message of promoting putting off parenthood. While research shows that most people elect to freeze their eggs due to lack of a suitable partner, not career ambitions, this is a great point and something that should absolutely be considered. Another commenter remarked that the necessity around elective, preventative egg freezing has been debated by medical experts and promoting such practices may be “marketing and scare tactics to get wealthy educated women to pay huge prices and large recurring subscription fees.” This is something we hadn’t thought of but could have some truth to it (especially when we think about the plastic surgery industry’s marketing toward women with the promise of youth).

Lastly, a podcaster and friend of the newsletter interviewed the Chief Innovation Officer of fertility company Kindbody on Monday and shared her own elective egg freezing journey in the episode. If you’re interested in learning more about her story and Kindbody’s program, check it out here.

💌 Up Next

That’s all for today! If you liked this edition of Not That Personal, we think one of your friends probably will too – refer one (or two or three) below. ;)

Have something to say? We’d love to hear it – reply to this email or leave an anonymous comment here :) 

Up next: So…lab-grown or natural diamonds? 

💖 S & J