Mitt Romney, it turns out, was a rather awful bully in high school.  In one incident, he pinned a kid down and forcibly cut off his hair.

But this, of course, was decades ago.  And as Steve Saideman notes, the statute of limitations we place on politicians tends to vary considerably on whether the offender shares our partisan stripes.  We hold our opponents accountable for actions far older than the ones we’ll hold our own candidate to account for.

So why is this a story?

Because bad apologies are sometimes worse than no apologies.  Here’s Steve, dissecting Romney’s apology:

“When asked about this story, [Romney] said this: “Back in high school, I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that.”

I hate, hate, hate when people apologize half-heartedly by making it seem like the victim was over-sensitive…

My family apologizes too much for things that are not their fault.  I really just want my kid not to do x again, whether that x is spilling something, yelling at me, or whatever.  But she is a kid.  When she is a grownup, I certainly hope that she would worry not about whether someone is sensitive to offense and worry more about doing things that are objectively wrong.”

Amen!

There’s some interesting research on the effect that insincere apologies have on victims and on others.   In a series of experiments, Jane Risen (Chicago) and Tom Gilovich (Cornell) compared three types of responses to a transgression:  Apology, no apology… and a insincere, forced apology.  

They found that direct victims will accept even insincere apologies, largely because victims fear looking dislikable if they don’t accept the apology.  But folks other than the victim aren’t bound by these same concerns.  

Risen and Gilovich found that observers (like those of us not actually bullied by the teenaged Romney, but who have read his insincere apology) are actually made more vengeful by a bad apology than no apology at all.

When apologies are effective, it is because they take responsibility and demonstrate remorse.  If Romney had acknowledged the harm he had done, if he showed that he knew why his behaviour was so hurtful, if he showed capacity for empathy with his victims — well, you’d be a pretty petty partisan to hold a grudge for the idiocy of his teenaged years.  But with his mealymouthed non-apology, all he does is implicitly accuse the victim of being oversensitive, and demonstrate that he doesn’t fully understand the hurt he caused.

I suppose the message here is — for politicos and others — don’t apologize until you are ready to properly apologize.  There’s evidence that late apologies can be better than early ones, because victims feel that later apologies come after their perspective has been heard and understood by the offender.

So, apologize only once you’ve really sought to understand and empathize with the person or people you harmed.  Apologize only once you’ve stopped deluding yourself that you were somehow not responsible.  And apologize only once you’re willing to admit your mistakes with candor and apologize for them with sincerity.

For those who live their lives in a constant state of embarrassment over their latest slipup or blunder, there may be some hope:   Showing embarrassment makes others perceive you as more trustworthy.

In the experiments, some participants “…viewed videos of students recalling their embarrassing moments, while others just saw photos of embarrassing reactions.

In both cases, the observers viewed others who acted embarrassed as more generous and trustworthy than people that acted unscathed by a potentially embarrassing event. The researchers also found that participants trusted others who showed signs of embarrassment in an economic simulation, too.”

Yet another piece of evidence that the right response to a mistake isn’t to deny and dodge blame.

It was Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, so it seems fitting to share some recent research about why gratitude is so important.

• When others express their gratitude to us for our help, we double down and act even more helpfully.
• Feelings of gratitude are the “booster shot” your romantic relationship needs.
• Count your blessings today, and you’ll feel more satisfied with life weeks from now.

Lots of interesting new trust research lately.  A little sampling:

• Unconscious racial biases shape our willingness to trust:
  “We … show greater trust in members of those groups toward whom we implicitly feel more favorable, and we do so independently of our explicit consciously accessible beliefs. In other words, our behavior is not driven solely by what we would consciously desire or intend.”  (Stanley et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
• We cope with stress by increasing our trust:
  “The up-regulation of trust is a relationship-focused coping strategy that facilitates the maintenance of social relationships during stressful experiences.” (Koranyi & Rothermund, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology)
• When we don’t trust government, we’re more willing to tolerate law-breakers.
  “…low levels of political trust are associated with less support for law compliance within a society. Low trust in political institutions results in less public willingness to defer to decisions taken by those institutions. In the absence of voluntary compliance, governments have to resort to coercive measures to enforce regulations with the result that governing is rendered more difficult and more costly. Therefore, low levels of political trust can undermine the effective governing of a society and carry with them a potential threat for the functioning of democratic processes.” (Marien & Hooghe, European Journal of Political Research)
• Who’s responsible for our declining generalized trust?  Mom and Dad.
  “We find that over the last decades children increasingly score lower on generalized trust than their parents. Moreover, most parents, independent of their own trust levels, attempt to instill in their children distrust in unknown people.” (Stolle & Nishikawa, Comparative Sociology)

Income inequality doesn’t just make the poor unhappy because they have lower income.  It’s because inequality deteriorates their trust in others and their perceptions of fairness:

Using General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008, we found that Americans were on average happier in the years with less national income inequality than in the years with more national income inequality. We further demonstrated that this inverse relation between income inequality and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust. That is, Americans trusted other people less and perceived other people to be less fair in the years with more national income inequality than in the years with less national income inequality. The negative association between income inequality and happiness held for lower-income respondents, but not for higher-income respondents. Most important, we found that the negative link between income inequality and the happiness of lower-income respondents was explained not by lower household income, but by perceived unfairness and lack of trust.

(Hat tip to Jiyin Cao for the link!)

I’m not sure that the most expedient way to build trust and social capital involves Navy SEALs, but this is still an interesting little result.

Two political scientists had Republicans and Democrats play the Trust Game (a game where players pass money, the passed money is multiplied, but the original passer has to rely on their partner to share the gains).  The first time they ran the study, it was a week before the strike that killed Osama Bin Laden.   The second time, it was right after Bin Laden’s death.  As you can see above, the effect of partisan rivalry on trust disappeared.  The most obvious explanation is that the Bin Laden strike boosted (shared) national identity, which made other social categories like political affiliation less salient.

(Before anyone gets too excited about Bin Laden’s lasting effect on restored inter-partisan trust, it’s probably worth noting that the average duration of rally effects is under ten months.  And John Sides points out that gains in intragroup trust among Americans might be offset by diminished intergroup trust between Americans and others.  All in all, I’m not ready to buy the idea that a stealthed-out Black Hawk is the best tool for building social capital.)