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Join the discussion
Are
expressions of remorse by public figures steps toward healing,
or are they acts of cathartic self-indulgence?
Anatomy
of an Apology
Reflections
on the 1997 presidential apology for the syphilis study at Tuskegee
A
stained-glass apology and other reconciliations
Scholars
of art history, literature, and psychology offer their viewpoints
on the nature and meaning of "apology."
The
full text of Lucas Carpenter's "Apology for an Apology"
The
full text of Elizabeth Pastan's "King Philip Augustus's
Stained-glass Apology at Soissons"
The stained-glass window
at the cathedral of Soissons.
Academic Exchange September
1999 Contents Page
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Academic Exchange:
In your research, what have you
found "an apology" (or "forgiveness" or "reconciliation")
to look like in primate behavior? How do we know that actual
"forgiveness" is taking place?
Frans de Waal: Chimpanzees kiss and embrace after a fight,
bonobos have sex, and many monkey species have their own ways
of making up, often involving grooming. This is the process of
reconciliation. Whether they have apologies is another matter.
I
would look at apology as a temporary submission: normally, submission
is shown
by lower ranking individuals, it signals that they're afraid
or seek to appease the dominant. Human apologies use signs of
submission, but in this case not strictly bound by the hierarchy
(although, apologies do also in our species come a lot more difficult
to dominants than to subordinates).
I once had a Chinese collaborator, Dr. Ren Mei Ren, who studied
stumptail
macaques in which reconciliation typically involves the dominant
holding the
bottom (or hips) of the subordinate. This was the pattern more
than 97% of the
time. She interpreted the fewer than 3 % exceptions, in which
the dominant
presented to the subordinate for a hold-bottom, as cases of apology
by the
dominant for whatever he/she had done.
AE:
From an evolutionary perspective, what is the significance an
"apology"? That is, why would "reconciliation"
rather than "competition" be necessary for survival--and
by extension, perhaps, the public good?
FD: Many animals survive through cooperation. In
order to maintain cooperative relationships despite occasional
conflict, some way of repairing relationships is needed. Many
animals are far too smart to simply 'forget' what happened between
them, so a more active process of repair is needed. It involves
a complex psychology that we often assume to be uniquely human.
But I believe it's much more ancient than we assume.
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