A sign of weakness?

What should you do when you realise that you have to apologise? Is it better to swallow your pride and say you’re sorry when somebody is waiting 30 ______ your apology?

The psychologist Jack Black says that people worry that an apology will be 31 ______ as a sign of weakness, rather than as their effort to understand and make up with the opponent. But he adds that effective apologies address the person’s feelings – they don’t prove a point.

As for how to do it, Professor Black has the following advice, “The right way to apologise is the way your mother taught you. Say you threw a stone at your brother. She’d have you go and 32 ______ him in the eye and say: ‘I’m sorry I threw the stone at you and I won’t do it again.’ It’s important to name what you did wrong, to show yourself as being regretful in some way and to indicate what might be different in the future.”

You should 33 ______ that the number of times you’ll need to repeat the apology may vary depending on where you live. 34 ______ to preliminary data collected by Professor Black, for a minor offence, the optimal number is a single “I’m sorry”. “If the offence is large, then making two apologies seems to be the magic number for restoring trust and liking,” Jack Black says. 35 ______, if you’re British, you may need to double that. “A single ‘Sorry’ does not 36 ______ as an apology: we have to say it so many times with a lot of adjectives,” says Professor Black.

Грамматика и Лексика

A sign of weakness? (30-36)

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