The words that make an apology convincing

A photo showing a person holding a bouquet of mixed flowers wrapped in brown paper, viewed from above and behind.

Photo by Oscar Wong/Getty Images

My son was two and we had just been discharged from hospital following a nasty winter bug. His birthday was only a few days away with no time to plan for a big party, so I invited a close family friend and her kids to a teddy bear-making workshop followed by a pizza. She agreed, huge relief – the problem was solved. But then she cancelled last-minute because apparently her children had received a better offer from a popular classmate who hosted great parties! My friend realised quickly that her honesty had fallen flat with me and so she came over to apologise.

I was reminded of this event recently when I attended a lecture about the psychology of apologies by my colleague Shiri Lev-Ari. She described how research has shown that apologies are most convincing when they involve greater cost, such as in terms of money or time. My friend seemed to know this intuitively – she turned up on my doorstep (time cost) with a bottle of champagne (financial cost) at a time that would have likely inconvenienced her (effort cost).

Shiri wondered if this cost rule would extend to the words that we use when we apologise, and in her recent research that’s exactly what she found. People judged apologies involving longer words of explanation (I did not mean to respond in a confrontational manner) as more convincing than apologies involving shorter words (I did not mean to answer in a hostile way), presumably because they signal greater cognitive cost.

So, here’s my message to my friend: next time you need to apologise, do turn up with that that bottle of champagne but consider replacing your ‘real sorrow’ with ‘genuine remorse’.

by Alice Gregory

FIND OUT MORE

For more on the psychology of effective apologies, check out this TED-Ed video ‘The Best Way to Apologize (According to Science)’ (2022).

Are you sure you need to apologise? The Psyche Guide ‘How to Save Yourself Another Pointless Guilt Trip’ (2021) by Aziz Gazipura provides advice for those who feel guilty even when they might not have done anything wrong.

NOTE TO SELFCOMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

How I became more facially expressive

Listen to this article

A man in a hoodie on a phone walking past a wall with posters and graffiti-covered advertisements.

South Korea, 2014. Photo by Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos

For most of my life I was not, I don’t think, a very facially expressive person. I’m ethnically Korean, and we tend not to move our faces too much (partly because it’s just the norm, along with a shared cultural concern that it encourages wrinkles). Even when telling a dramatic story, big expressions never felt natural to me, the way they seemed to be for others, and I’d wonder whether the restraint on my face was limiting my ability to connect with people.

It’s not an absurd idea. Research from 2024 concluded that being facially expressive is socially advantageous, suggesting it might lead others to like you more and see you as more agreeable. Another study found that expressiveness predicted how attractive people seemed to others.

My relationship to facial expressiveness started to change about three years ago, when I started learning American Sign Language. ASL is a language of the body. Individual signs provide a vocabulary, but much of the grammar and descriptive nuance comes from how you move your body and face. Suddenly, my stiff and muted facial expressions became a fluency issue, getting in the way of my legibility as a signer.

Signing ‘I like’, for example, communicates something far different when you do it with bright eyes and strong movements compared with signing it with a shrug and noncommittal expression. I’ve learned to make these distinctions clear across my face.

Over time, I’ve noticed a difference – I am more expressive now with everyone, not just when I’m signing. This, in turn, has made me feel more outgoing in conversation. I have a hunch that people now perceive me as friendlier.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling tired or shy, I’ll notice myself under-expressing, slipping back into my old ways. In those moments I remind myself that showing your feelings on your face is rewarding, and a way to invite greater understanding.

by Hannah Seo

FIND OUT MORE

The Psyche Idea ‘Speaking a Different Language Can Change How You Act and Feel’ (2024) by Antonella Gismundi explores how changing from one spoken language to another can affect speakers’ sense of self.

I wrote more about learning ASL in The New York Times Magazine in the article ‘How Sign Language Can Help Us All Be Better Communicators’ (2025), describing how the physicality of this tactile language and its grammar butted up against the instinct for precise language.

NOTE TO SELFPOETRY

Existential crisis? Try reading Wordsworth

Listen to this article

Portrait painting of a man in a thoughtful pose with hand on head wearing a dark coat and white cravat against a dark background.

William Wordsworth (1818) by Richard Carruthers. Courtesy the Wordsworth Museum

William Wordsworth was just a few years younger than I am now when he wrote the ageless poem ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’ (1807). He laments the falling away of his childhood as it departs ever further into memory:

It is not now as it hath been of yore;–
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

I too sense a receding past, as childish certainties are replaced by rather harrowing questions: what am I doing here? Is this it? What does my life mean? As I become increasingly aware of the finitude of my days, my desire for answers grows more urgent.

These sorts of questions can induce a sense of existential imbalance, even crisis. Two great American philosophers, William James and John Dewey, had crises of just this sort when their sense of purpose seemed to evaporate. And they both navigated their angst in a similar way.

For James, an episode of intense crisis was alleviated by poetry, when he read of: ‘Authentic tidings of invisible things … subsisting at the heart / Of endless agitation.’ It gave him a sense, he wrote, of freedom. For Dewey, relief came in the form of a full-blown epiphany, which he later gamely tried to articulate: ‘everything that’s here is here, and you can just lie back on it’. The poet who aided both philosophers? Wordsworth.

So I read his masterpiece, The Prelude (1850). He too describes finding moments of poetic lucidity that unburdened him of a certain human painfulness. When he climbed Mount Snowdon, he recognised – in a flash – that an impersonal God speaks through nature, that love is the fount of all that’s worthy, and that suffering is necessary for true creativity: pertinent answers to pertinent questions. Though mine still remain.

by Sam Dresser

FIND OUT MORE

On the Romantic (though German) generation of poets and thinkers, you could hardly do better than this Aeon Essay by Andrea Wulf, ‘The First Romantics’ (2022).

William James has been fortunate enough to find a brilliant expositor in John Kaag. His Aeon Essay ‘The Greatest Use of Life’ (2018) is a classic.

NOTE TO SELFNATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Snorkelling taught me stillness

Listen to this article

Photo of a flounder underwater, lying on a sandy seafloor with seaweed, showing its eyes pointing upward.

A greenback flounder (Rhombosolea tapirina) seen at Jawbone Marine Sanctuary, Port Phillip, Victoria. Courtesy Julian Finn/Museums Victoria/CC BY-NC

What comes to mind when you think of snorkelling? Tropical, crystalline waters teeming with flamboyant fish and vibrant corals? Or perhaps spectacular encounters with charismatic marine megafauna like dolphins or whale sharks? Last summer, I moved away from the coastline-spoilt Sydney, where I’d regularly encountered dolphins, whales and fish that looked like novelty running shoes. Arriving on Melbourne’s more muted shores, I felt bereft – until I discovered how much life this unfairly maligned bay holds.

Leafing through Day Trip Melbourne: 52 Nature Adventures (2023), an excellent guidebook on the natural spaces in and around Melbourne, I was surprised to discover a marine sanctuary a quick half-hour drive away. From the outside, it frankly looked a bit drab, dominated by muddy greens and browns – certainly no Great Barrier Reef. And when I first braved its frigid waters, it didn’t instantly pay off. While kelp and algae forests undulated gracefully in the currents, I couldn’t make out any of their residents until I stilled myself – no easy feat for a chronically impatient person. But just as I was about to give up, a metre below my hovering body, I spotted a flounder digging itself into the ocean floor. It was an enchanting, beige-on-beige spectacle, enough to entice me to return the next weekend, and the next. Over time, my attention to detail sharpened, revealing tiny seahorses, colourful nudibranchs, and the subtle changes in the underwater landscape throughout the seasons.

Even outside the water, the sanctuary has delivered on its name: I recall the rhythmic flapping of a banjo ray’s nasal flaps or the bay’s static crackling in my ears and a calm rushes over me, no matter how restless I feel. And as I wander the city’s parks and bustling centre, I tune in to the close attention the bay’s creatures are teaching me, noticing little details – miniature spectacles unfolding everywhere.

by Natalie Bühler

FIND OUT MORE

If you aren’t close to a body of water, listening to and watching birds can provide a similar experience – check out the Psyche Guide ‘Learn to Tune into Birdsong – Respite and Fascination Await’ (2025) by David M Logue.

To discover how paying close attention in general can fill our lives with more awe, read the Psyche Guide ‘How to Experience More Wow’ (2021) by Summer Allen.

NOTE TO SELFATTACHMENT AND PARENTING

Who’s responsible for your attachment style?

Listen to this article

A child in a white dress clinging to a woman’s hand, hiding her face in the woman’s pink shawl, outdoors.

Photo by Tamara Govedarovic/Unsplash

If you’ve heard about attachment styles – the ways we tend to relate to others in close relationships – you might have been told that it comes down to how our parents treated us. According to classic attachment theory, those of us lucky enough to receive plenty of warmth and support from our early caregivers develop a ‘secure’ model of relationships: we continue to trust close others to be there for us and feel comfortable depending on them. Those who don’t receive such support may develop ‘insecure’ models – becoming anxious about losing people, or averse to getting too attached.

Yet these models are not ‘set in stone’, contemporary attachment researchers say; we update them based on novel relationship experiences. That is, it’s not all about mom’s responsiveness to your needs. Other kinds of bonds matter, too.

Supporting this view, the research psychologist Keely Dugan and her colleagues analysed data on hundreds of people, provided by their parents, observers, and the participants themselves as they aged to around 30. As expected, people’s experiences with their mothers in childhood were correlated with how secure they felt in multiple kinds of relationships as adults. But the quality of other early relationships was predictive as well. For instance, having more positive experiences with friends in childhood was associated with feeling more secure in romantic relationships as an adult.

These results had me thinking about my own attachments in unexpected ways. Not just about how parental warmth might have equipped me to feel safe relying on others, but how my friends from childhood (some of whom I’m still close with) may have served as attachment figures themselves. Did learning – year after year, hangout after sleepover after band practice – to feel safe with my pals help set me on a course toward a happy marriage? I’m sure they’d love to take credit for that, and perhaps they deserve some.

by Matt Huston

FIND OUT MORE

To learn more about attachment styles, what they mean for you, and how you might change yours, check out the Psyche Guide ‘How to Be More Secure in Your Relationships’ (2022), by Graham Johnston and Matt Wotton.

The psychologist and attachment researcher R Chris Fraley, one of the co-authors of the research mentioned here, provides a handy overview of attachment theory on his website.

Explore more

Painting of a contemplative woman in a brown dress holding flowers, with a mountainous landscape and church in the background.

SHAME AND GUILT

How to forgive yourself

Finding it hard to move past a hurtful mistake? With these steps toward repair and renewal, you can do and feel better

by Nathaniel Wade & Marilyn Cornish

Abstract stone sculpture of a human figure with folded arms against a grey background.

COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

How to say no

It’s a little word, but if you’re a chronic people pleaser it can be so tricky to say it. These tips and tricks will help

by Shayla Love

A marble statue of a man covering his face with his hand set against a dark blue background.

SHAME AND GUILT

How to save yourself another pointless guilt trip

Just because you feel guilty doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. Relax the rules you live by and set yourself free

by Aziz Gazipura

Photo of a green tent pitched on stone steps beside large columns and a bust at night, urban surroundings are visible.

COMPASSION AND EMPATHY

Pity is an emotion easy to scorn but central to our humanity

Have pity for pity: when misused, it can express condescension or selfish relief, but it can also be a consoling virtue

by Gordon Marino

Painting of elegantly dressed people at a party, one serving sandwiches to others who are smiling and holding plates.

VIRTUES AND VICES

Be honest: little white lies are more harmful than you think

Even well-intentioned white lies can foster disconnection and distrust – openness and honesty really are the best policy

by Elena Svetieva & Leanne ten Brinke

Photo of a man relaxing on a garden lounger with hands behind head smiling, surrounded by chairs and a bottle on the grass.

GRIEF

Why do so many of us blame ourselves after a loved one’s death?

After losing my father, I felt the guilt and regret that burden many other bereaved people – and found a way to carry them

by Delaney Rebernik

A dimly lit street with parked cars at night. A building has a large, vertical “HOTEL” sign illuminated.

DECISION-MAKING

For maximisers, bad choices really sting

We all make wrong decisions, but if you’re a ‘maximiser’ rather than a ‘satisficer’, the regret hurts all the more

by Richard Fisher

Photo of clergy in white robes and a man with umbrellas, standing outdoors on a rainy day.

COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

Rise up fellow complainers, let’s be vulnerable together

Complaining can be socially beneficial, even morally generous. The skill is to use it to build relationships of trust

by Kathryn J Norlock