Sorries seem to have the harder words

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.