Hayward said: “I am very, very sorry that this accident occurred, very sorry. . . . And I do believe that it’s right to investigate it fully and draw the right conclusions.” But we heard this: “I am sorry it happened, sure, but I am not saying that it was anything we could have prevented.” He also said, “This is a complex accident, caused by an unprecedented combination of failures.” In other words, it wasn’t our fault.

Image Credit... Source: ABC News/ESPN, February 2010.

Jennifer Robbennolt, a professor of law and psychology at the University of Illinois, calls these kinds of statements “nonapology apologies,” and they are worse, she argues, than no apology at all. In a study she has conducted, she presented test subjects with a hypothetical situation — one in which a cyclist injures a pedestrian. She then attributed one of three statements to the cyclist and asked the subjects whether the injured party should accept a proffered settlement. When a full apology was offered (“I am so sorry that you were hurt. The accident was all my fault, I was going too fast and not watching where I was going”), 73 percent of the respondents said the pedestrian should be willing to accept the settlement. When no apology was offered, 52 percent said the pedestrian should settle. And when only a partial apology was offered (“I am so sorry that you were hurt, and I really hope that you feel better soon”), 35 percent opted for a settlement.

So what does a successful apology sound like? Much like that of Robbennolt’s first cyclist’s — an expression of regret, an assumption of full responsibility. It also helps to put forward a plan for preventing similar mistakes in the future. In business, the Tylenol poisoning case of 1982 is still the gold standard. James Burke, the chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, stepped up and took the blame, promising to recall all Tylenol products and create tamper-resistant packaging. Two years ago, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia also successfully apologized when he expressed deep regret over past wrongs against the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, specifically the removal of children from their parents. A less well known example was a decision the chief of staff at the Veteran’s Affairs medical center in Lexington, Ky., made a couple of decades ago when postmortem clinical tests showed that an elderly patient died because of a hospital error. The family would never have known but for the fact that the hospital contacted them and admitted its mistake. The family was offered an apology and also compensation and a plan of how internal procedures would change to prevent the same thing from happening to others.

In short, the hospital took a risk. Apologizing in spite of the fact that it could get you in deeper legal or personal trouble seems to be a key difference between a compelling show of regret and a confounding one. In admitting, “I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Jim Joyce, the umpire, risked added humiliation. Describing the Bloody Sunday massacre as “both unjustified and unjustifiable,” Cameron took the chance that he might reignite the political tinderbox of Northern Ireland.