ArticleBritish journal of psychology (London, England : 1953)2025
Sorries seem to have the harder words.
Article in British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Sorries seem to have the harder words.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Is someone who says 'I'm genuinely sorry' more sorry than someone who says 'I'm really sorry'? The studies in this paper show that people use longer words when apologizing (Study 1) and interpret apologies with longer words as more apologetic (Study 2). This is in line with signalling accounts that propose that apologizers should incur a cost (greater production effort) to indicate the sincerity of their apologies. This behaviour illustrates a type of iconicity in communication that has not been examined so far: dynamic iconicity - iconicity that is context-dependent rather than inherent to a word's meaning (e.g. producing long words to convey effort). These studies thus have implications for our understanding of the emergence, prevalence and role of iconicity in communication.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.