ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 11 August 2017 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01375 Edited by: Gul Gunaydin, Bilkent University, Turkey Reviewed by: Christopher S. Nave, University of Pennsylvania, United States Dominik Mischkowski, National Institutes of Health, United States *Correspondence: Gili Freedman gili.freedman@gmail.com Specialty section: This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 28 April 2017 Accepted: 28 July 2017 Published: 11 August 2017 Citation: Freedman G, Burgoon EM, Ferrell JD, Pennebaker JW and Beer JS (2017) When Saying Sorry May Not Help: The Impact of Apologies on Social Rejections. Front. Psychol. 8:1375. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01375 When Saying Sorry May Not Help: The Impact of Apologies on Social Rejections Gili Freedman 1,2 *, Erin M. Burgoon 2 , Jason D. Ferrell 2 , James W. Pennebaker 2 and Jennifer S. Beer 2 1 Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States, 2 Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States If you have to socially reject someone, will it help to apologize? Social rejection is a painful emotional experience for targets, yet research has been silent on recommendations for rejectors. Across three sets of studies, apologies increased hurt feelings and the need to express forgiveness but did not increase feelings of forgiveness. The investigation of hurt feelings arising from a social rejection is challenging because previous research has shown that participants are reluctant to admit they felt hurt by the rejection. The present research addressed the self-report issue in two ways. First, participants rated how much social rejections would hurt someone’s feelings as a function of whether an apology was included across various social rejection scenarios (Studies 1a–e). Second, aggressive behavior was measured in response to face-to-face social rejections that were manipulated to include or exclude apologies (Studies 2a–c). More specifically, Studies 1a–e (N = 1096) found that although individuals sometimes use apologies in social rejections, social rejections with apologies are associated with higher levels of explicit hurt feelings. Studies 2a–c (N = 355) manipulated the presence of an apology in face-to-face social rejections and found that social rejections with apologies cause more aggressive behavior. As in previous research, participants are reluctant to admit to feeling hurt. Finally, Study 3 (N = 426) found that in response to social rejections with apologies, individuals feel more compelled to express forgiveness despite not actually feeling more forgiveness. Implications for the role of language in social rejections are discussed. Keywords: social rejection, hurt feelings, apologies, forgiveness, language INTRODUCTION Imagine you find out that your friend gets lunch every Friday with your mutual coworkers. You ask to join, but your friend declines your request. Is there anything about the way your friend phrased the declination that would make you feel more or less hurt? More broadly, what insights can psychological science provide for people in the unenviable position of having to socially reject someone? Social rejection occurs when a rejector (i.e., perpetrator) denies the target (i.e., recipient) a requested social interaction (Leary, 1990; Williams, 1997; Molden et al., 2009). Social rejection can occur in a wide range of domains from romantic interactions (turning down a date) to interactions with a friend (telling a friend that you do not want him or her to join your lunch group) and even Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1375