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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

Someone do a different study on the chronic apologizers

In my anecdata, its women around me that are apologizing for very benign things, often and habitually, apologizing for basically breathing and other things that I’m sometimes saying “…. You don’t have to apologize for that”

I’ve heard a couple of reasons for why they think they do it but for a studies’ sake:

Could there be overlapping results and motives as this study, despite being an opposite far extreme of behavior? Or could the psychological result be purely negative? something else?

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I'm not sure if it's necessarily gender-coded, but one thing that I have noticed is that I personally value apologies less from people that constantly apologize, the same way that it's hard to see a compliment as genuine if you're the 10th person in line receiving a compliment from the same person.

In addition to the frequency of apologizing, I think it also makes it worse if you're constantly apologizing about the same thing, especially if it's something bad that the apology is actually valid for. It always makes me think of the pretty harsh but sometimes valid saying "don't be sorry, be better".

An apology in my mind only works if it's rare, heartfelt and honest. If it happens all the time, for trivial things and does not action any change in behavior from the person, it's pretty close (or worse) than not apologizing in the first place.

>In my anecdata, its women around me that are apologizing for very benign things, often and habitually, apologizing for basically breathing and other things that I’m sometimes saying “…. You don’t have to apologize for that”

A dear friend of mine does that. We kept telling her to stop apologizing, but she just keeps doing it.

So my peer group made it a drinking game. Every time <my friend> apologizes, everyone has to drink.

It hasn't made her stop apologizing, but it's less disconcerting when you're half in the bag. :)

> So my peer group made it a drinking game. Every time <my friend> apologizes, everyone has to drink.

Chances are that someone who apologizes for "basically breathing" doesn't have the ability to even express mild displeasure at the game, much less feel comfortable requesting that it stop. So it's a coin flip whether your friend a) feels like part of the group during this activity in a positive way, or b) takes the whole ordeal as yet another reason from the universe to apologize.

I find constant apologizing distancing, having the reverse effect. It's like not putting trust in me having empathy enough for whatever little inconvenience the "offending" party is causing me. It also sometimes feels like projection, like an unconscious way of expressing that I should be sorry for being brash.

Definitely not all women are chronic apologizers, but I can't think of ever meeting a chronicly apologetic man. I don't think parental norms and society, taken together, encourage it or even really allow it, at least in the West.

I suspect there's big overlap between women who are chronic apologizers and women with overbearing mothers (NPD, BPD types).

Have met and worked with many male chronic apologizers. I am a recovering one myself!

Interesting idea re: NPD/BPD in parents as a possible correlate. Connecting the dots in existing clinical research may agree.

While it's less socially acceptable to be a male chronic apologizer, I can easily think of one in my life. Still, there are many more male apology abstainers that I've known over the years. Hell, I was raised by one.

I'm a man and I'm a chronic apologiser, and I think it probably at least partially originates from being physically abused as a child. It's easy to get in a habit of just apologising immediately for any sort of negative reaction so that you (hopefully) don't get severely beaten

I'm working on it and have improved a lot, but I used to do things like apologise to people whenever they expressed any sort of displeasure or discomfort, even if I had absolutely nothing to do with it and they couldn't possibly think I did... I used to regularly apologise to people when they complained about the weather for example.

Not just women are serial apologizes: plenty of men fall victim to this as well.

I bet! That’s why I wrote it that way of here’s my experience maybe others experience something similar

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