Based on the original experiment, we expected the annoyed people to be much less likely to return the extra cash, and indeed that is what the results showed. But what about the third group? Surprise!—the apology was a perfect remedy. The amount of extra cash returned in the apology condition was the same as it was when people were not annoyed at all. Indeed, we found that the word “sorry” completely counteracted the effect of annoyance. (For handy future reference, here’s the magic formula: 1 annoyance + 1 apology = 0 annoyance.) This showed us that apologies do work, at least temporarily.
