Roughly 43% of people who stood their ground after a conflict reported lingering regret about not having apologized, compared with approximately 22% of apologizers who regretted the apology — estimates derived from Exline, Deshea, and Holeman’s 2007 qualitative thematic coding of open-ended responses, not from a structured survey question, and should be read as directional rather than precise. Apologizers described emotional relief, restored self-regard, and a sense of personal growth. The minority who regretted an apology pointed to specific contextual failures — mutual grudges, perceived insincerity, or apologies delivered in unsafe relationships — rather than to the act of apologizing itself.
The picture is not as simple as “always say sorry.” Li and colleagues showed in 2023 that apologizing without genuinely believing you did something wrong decreases guilt but increases anger in the apologizer, which in turn reduces their willingness to make further amends. The apology becomes a hollow ritual that satisfies neither party. Separately, Okimoto, Wenzel, and Hedrick (2013) found that refusing to apologize produces a measurable short-term boost in self-esteem, feelings of power, and value integrity — a psychological reward that partly explains why people dig in after conflicts even when bystanders think they should concede. The standing-your-ground option is not irrational; it just tends to age poorly.
The critical limitation is that no quantitative survey was found that directly asks a representative sample “Do you regret apologizing?” or “Do you regret not apologizing?” with binary response options. The Exline et al. study used qualitative thematic coding of open-ended responses, and our percentage estimates are derived from the proportions described in the text. The directional finding — roughly 2:1 in favor of having apologized — is moderate by the standards of this dataset, and it carries a large caveat: it applies to apologies the person genuinely meant, not to performative concessions extracted under social pressure.