Just Say You're Sorry Already!

Few of us can say we’ve never done anything to offend, annoy, irritate or otherwise alienate prospective or existing customers, clients and partners. Erring is indeed human, but how we handle our blunders can truly impact the amount of damage wreaked on both our reputations and our bottom lines.

Author, professor and behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores how and why we behave the way we do in his new book: The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. In one original experiment, he concludes what your mom has always known (and tried to hammer into your 5-year-old brain): if you say “sorry” when you screw up, it makes things better.

In this particular experiment, Dan Ariely sought to gauge the change in behavior for people who had been treated rudely. The setup involved “hiring” coffee shop customers to perform a simple task for $5, and then (apparently accidentally) overpaying them. Some subjects were subjected to rude behavior by the experimenter, who appeared to take an unimportant cell phone call in the middle of explaining the task. The subjects who experienced the rude behavior were much more likely to pocket the overpayment.

Ariely then repeated the experiment, but had the experimenter add a simple apology, stating, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have taken that call.” The apology completely offset the effects of the rude behavior. The subjects who experienced the rude behavior but then got the apology were just as likely to return the overpayment as the control group.