Apologize For Lies And Earn Back Your Trust – Dave’s Diary

As we head full speed into the “Presidential Political Season” we are and will continue to be bombarded by the accusations of fibs, misstatements, distortions and outright lies told to us by the various candidates.  Usually it’s one candidate saying that about their opponent. And vice versa.  Sometimes it will be the media itself doing the lying.  Wait…Brian Williams is still on the sidelines, right? 

Regardless, whenever one of our wannabe leaders is caught in a lie, how often do we hear a simple, sincere and believable apology?  Not often enough.  Perhaps they subscribe to the idea that apologizing is a sign of weakness.  Bad call.  New York Magazine reports researchers at Harvard Business School found that apologizing is actually a sign of trustworthiness.

People who even apologize for things they can't help like bad weather, or another person's terrible commute, are experienced as showing others that they are empathetic and capable of seeing the world through another person's eyes.  That sounds like a quality worth voting for!

In the Harvard study, these little superfluous apologies helped male undergraduates to convince strangers to do them a favor.  They were more successful when they apologized for the rain before asking to use a person's cell phone than they were when they did not. (NY Mag)