Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
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Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
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Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#2I had heard people say this about Reagan. He took accountability for things that were arguably out of his control, and people later didn't blame him for things that were.
To me the lesson is accepting blame for a problem doesn't just take "Whose fault is this?" off of the table, but it increases the trust in finding a solution.
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#3This makes a lot of sense to me - it's not even because the apology is logical, but because it's a gesture that shows the speaker is thinking of the other's welfare.
There's a rule I have followed for many years when doing customer service - if the person is upset, apologize. It doesn't matter if you can't give them what they're asking for, or if they made a silly mistake. Just - make them feel better, then do what you sensibly can. It really works well... I don't get many angry complaints anyway, but this tends to defuse them immediately.
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#4Shouldn't the control group have had a non-apology comment about the weather or something? Instead of comparing, "Sorry for the weather. May I use your phone?" to "May I use your phone?", it would seem much preferable to compare it to "Lousy weather we've been having. May I use your phone?"
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#5tl;dr - a flawed study concluded something that may not necessarily be true
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#6Shouldn't the control group have had a non-apology comment about the weather or something? Instead of comparing, "Sorry for the weather. May I use your phone?" to "May I use your phone?", it would seem much preferable to compare it to "Lousy weather we've been having. May I use your phone?"
That's exactly what I thought when I read the article. I'm not quite sure how that was missed during the design of the experiment.
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#7One wonders what the self-referential feedback loop will become when the scientific study of practical sociopathy becomes widely understood and adopted.
Although perhaps I'm naive to think it could be widely understood.
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#8Shouldn't the control group have had a non-apology comment about the weather or something? Instead of comparing, "Sorry for the weather. May I use your phone?" to "May I use your phone?", it would seem much preferable to compare it to "Lousy weather we've been having. May I use your phone?"
Also, in the UK, the term "Sorry" is a rather common replacement for "Excuse me", in fact, some might consider it more polite.
Aside from the non-apology weather control group, they could have introduced another control that used different construction on the apology: "Apologize for the dreadful weather", etc.
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#9[deleted]
Re: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
#10Shouldn't the control group have had a non-apology comment about the weather or something? Instead of comparing, "Sorry for the weather. May I use your phone?" to "May I use your phone?", it would seem much preferable to compare it to "Lousy weather we've been having. May I use your phone?"
I don't want to jump to conclusions as that is a glaringly obvious control and I find it hard to believe a researcher worth their salt would leave out such a control group.
Does anyone have a link to the full paper?
edit: grammar