What Does It Take to Survive a Scandal?

MAUGHAN: “Are you really going to make me do this?”

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DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth.

MAUGHAN: I’m Mike Maughan.

DUCKWORTH + MAUGHAN: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show: how do you restore your image after a scandal?

MAUGHAN: “I messed up, I know what I did was wrong. Moving forward, you can hold me to a higher standard.”

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MAUGHAN: Angela, we have an amazing question today about scandal.

DUCKWORTH: Scandal? Like the um TV show?

MAUGHAN: Not the show. Sorry, I know you got very excited about Kerry Washington here. “Hi NSQ. Over the last few years, so many celebrities, leaders, politicians, and public figures have been ‘canceled’ for a range of things from ignorant and thoughtless to egregious and appalling behavior. Some of these people have been able to recover their reputation completely, while others appear to have had their image irreparably and permanently damaged. Why does society forgive or forget some of these behaviors, but not others? And is there a particular formula for successful recovery from a scandal? Best, Anonymous.”

DUCKWORTH: Mm, I love this question

MAUGHAN: Here’s my take: they’re anonymous, so maybe this is like, “Hey guys” —

DUCKWORTH: Oh, is this like, “I have a ‘friend’ who got canceled. Any advice for my ‘friend’?”

MAUGHAN: Asking for a quote, “friend.” Okay so, one, I will just say that the data is clear on this — just anecdotally you would know this anyway — but the number of public apologies and cancellations, whatever, have become so vast that they’re just everywhere nowadays.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, scandals are up or apologies are up?

MAUGHAN: All of the above. Is there a scandal, or a public apology, or a cancellation that really sticks out to you in your mind?

DUCKWORTH: Okay I actually have an answer to this, but it’s, it’s old. So, Monica Lewinsky and I were interns at the White House in the very same summer. 

MAUGHAN: What?!

DUCKWORTH: Yes! That particular scandal is one that I had a front row seat to, in a sense. I only met Monica Lewinsky once during that summer at a party. And I do recall therefore paying even more attention than most people — I think most people were pretty glued to their screens — during the proceedings. But I have wondered, why is it that — well, many people have forgiven Clinton for that scandal. I guess some have not, but you’re exactly right. Sometimes these scandals unfold in ways that are like, oh, suddenly everybody’s embracing this person again and other times not. So, anyway, yes. That is my scandal story. 

MAUGHAN: That’s one of the ones that sticks out most to me. Now, partly it’s our age and where we were in our formative years. And I was, I think, in high school, and it was this massive media frenzy. But here’s what I think is interesting: it was so anomalous and rare back then that something like that stood out massively.  

DUCKWORTH: The scandal and the apology? Or just the scandal? 

MAUGHAN: Both. We now live in what — and I don’t remember who coined the phrase, but someone called the “Age of Apology.” There’s a professor of political science at the University of Houston, Brandon Rottinghaus, who talked about, like, how scandals don’t hit like they used to partly, he posits, because media and politics are so divided. When something comes out about X person did this or Y person did that, one, often people only get one side of the story. But two, we exercise justification so much that we are like, “Well our side can’t have done anything bad,” or we rationalize away instead of holding people to sort of the same standard regardless of which political affiliation they have.

DUCKWORTH: I do actually think there’s a psychology of taboo, which is underlying why we consider some things a scandal versus, like, oh, a bad thing. 

MAUGHAN: Right. Okay. Say more about this. 

DUCKWORTH: So, every society has these unthinkable acts, these bright lines that you do not cross. Even, like, naming them is like — You know, they, they make you take a deep breath. And I think what you’re saying is that in a polarized society where there is less consensus about the moral right and wrong, even about taboos, which are usually consensual in a society, — I mean, that would suggest that, like, only half of the country is scandalized and the other half is like, “Meh.”

MAUGHAN: Yeah. I think it’s kind of that, right? I, I think, one, fewer things are considered taboo in today’s day and age.

DUCKWORTH: Like, period.

MAUGHAN: Well, think about it. I mean, having a child out of wedlock you were ostracized, scarlet letter, all these things.

DUCKWORTH: Right. Not being the dominant religion was also a taboo and would therefore lead to scandal.  

MAUGHAN: So, there’s so many things like that, but I’m not sure that it’s because different parties consider different things taboo. I think it’s that different parties will justify their own person’s behavior or scandalize someone else’s behavior, not using different standards of what’s bad, but just saying like, “Because you’re ‘other,’ this thing was terrible.” Or, “Because you’re of my same party, I’m going to justify your behavior.” And it’s like, “Oh, well, I can rationalize that,” or, “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

DUCKWORTH: You mean depending on their party affiliation, whether they’re Democrat or Republican.

MAUGHAN: Yes.

DUCKWORTH: So, you would predict that scandals would be perhaps on the rise if you’re like, “Yeah, I’m going to be scandalized by the thing that the other party is doing because I am so anti that party”? Is that what you’re saying?

MAUGHAN: A hundred percent. One of the things that Rottinghaus, who I just talked about, that professor, also talks about is this idea of staff, basically. So, if you think about it, often the people who survive the scandal are in power versus the people who work for them. And I’ll never forget, there was a, a movie that came out when I was in grad school, and David Gergen — who’s famously counseled, I don’t know, seven, I think, different presidents  — a very well-established White House advisor. He watched the movie with us, and then we had a Q& A after, and it was a movie about —

DUCKWORTH: Is he a Republican or a Democrat?

MAUGHAN: He’s served presidents of both parties. And we watch this movie about campaigns. And in this movie, one of the staffers, for example, had had an affair with the candidate. She got pregnant. She is basically forced to have an abortion. There are all these people covering it up. Da da da. Afterwards, we have a Q&A with David Gergen and several other people who’ve been high-ranking individuals on both Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns. And they’re like, “Look, I know many of you are going to go work in presidential politics. Be careful.” Staffers in a scandal are more likely to be sort of thrown off to the side.

DUCKWORTH: So they’re saying, like, word to the wise: if you are the underling and you are involved in a scandal, in theory, you should be the one exonerated because you had less power, but, in fact, you are more likely to be the one not forgiven.

MAUGHAN: You’re one that they’re going to try to use to cover themselves up, and you’re still the one who’s going to get tossed to the curb.

DUCKWORTH: Now, this didn’t happen for Monica Lewinsky, right? Because I don’t think Monica Lewinsky was canceled.

MAUGHAN: Oh, I think Monica was absolutely canceled.

DUCKWORTH: You think so? She was, like, a kid!

MAUGHAN: Monica Lewinsky basically went into hiding for a couple of decades. She is considered, in many ways, the first example of cyberbullying, because the internet was just at its dawn. She became the butt of every late-night joke. I mean, if you think about it, like you just said, she was in essence, just a kid who had had an affair with the most powerful person on the planet.

DUCKWORTH: Right, if you want to make an argument about power dynamics, the President of the United States and then an intern. What could she have been? Early 20s at most? So, she was cyberbullied. Of course,  maybe not by a majority of Americans, but by —

MAUGHAN: Oh, I think the majority of Americans.

DUCKWORTH: A majority of Americans thought she was in the wrong?

MAUGHAN: Definitely held her accountable and cyberbullied her. Her name became synonymous with scandal. I think we in many ways ruined her life. In fact, I only met Monica Lewinsky once, and it was after she put out her TED Talk where she basically, I think 20-something years later said, “I am going to reclaim my story.”  

DUCKWORTH: No, I totally respect this. I’m just still a little open-jawed. I mean, the last time I saw Clinton on a television screen, you know, I was watching the Democratic National Convention and his extremely long speech. I would argue that Bill Clinton is not canceled today, otherwise they wouldn’t have him at the Democratic National Convention, correct?

MAUGHAN: Well, I think that Bill Clinton was not canceled for a long time. Then the #MeToo movement came about and it re-shined a spotlight on his behavior. Obviously, he’s not canceled to the point where — he, as a former president, just spoke at the Democratic National Convention. There were a lot of news articles that came out, though, that basically say, “Hey, Democratic Party.” And these are from, you know, Democratic operatives or other less-biased sources, and they’re just kind of like, “It’s time to move on past Bill Clinton. His behavior was egregious in the past and we shouldn’t continue to have Bill Clinton be part of these events.” It’s — I don’t, I’m making up a term now, but almost like a “soft cancel.” Let’s kind of move on. And also, like, I just think we can’t talk about being canceled and — I don’t know what you call it —  welcomed back into the fold, without also looking at   sexism, racism, and privilege. I think there are a lot of stories about how different crimes are covered in the news, and it may be reported very differently if it’s a Black male from a low socioeconomic environment versus a white male from a place of privilege who’s attending maybe an elite university. Maybe we let certain people with privilege, whatever form that privilege takes — money, better looking, different family situation, et cetera — back into the fold differently. I don’t have data, but we have to acknowledge that in the world in which we live, when we let people back into the fold versus permanently excommunicate them, there are other factors that weigh in on that that are, are not right.

DUCKWORTH: So, we might be more readily forgiving of people for reasons that have nothing to do with their guilt or innocence —  that it’s not so simple, right? I guess regardless of whether scandals are up or down, you know, whether we’re, like, morally outraged more or less and why, I did hear about this, like, “Age of Apology” in an academic psychology paper. And this paper, actually, they say: what is the effect of the increasing number of apologies on how apologies are received? And I think maybe that is in a way the heart of this question for our dear listener, Anonymous.

MAUGHAN: Right. Let me, if I could, just share a couple of apologies, and then maybe you can dive into the psychology. Ben Ho is a economics professor at Vassar and Karen Cerulo is at Rutgers University and is a cultural psychologist. So, Ben Ho in a 2018 Freakonomics Radio episode, one of our sibling shows, talked about how to optimize your apology and he focused mostly on this idea that an apology has to be costly to be effective. And he’s talked about two types of costs specifically. One is the status apology. He basically said you admit incompetence, you ask for forgiveness, and then in some sense, you make yourself look stupid. An example he gave is, “I’m sorry, that was completely idiotic.” If it’s done sincerely, then that has some real reputational cost. The other one he talked about was the commitment apology, which he posits can be even more powerful and it’s this commitment to do better in the future. So, the example there, “I messed up, I know what I did was wrong. Moving forward, you can hold me to a higher standard.” That one’s riskier because it backfires, obviously, if you don’t —

DUCKWORTH: When you don’t follow through.

MAUGHAN: Yes, hundred percent. So, now moving to Cerulo quickly — she did a study of 183 different apologies over a 13-year period, from 2000 to 2012. And she looked at only highly-visible apologies, and what I mean by that is every apology was covered in at least five or more distinct news outlets. All of them had public polling data attached to them. And she then looked at people’s reactions to determine whether an apology was effective or not. Some examples: Marion Jones was an Olympic athlete who was caught doping. Kevin Rudd was the Prime Minister of Australia. He apologized on behalf of the nation for removing Aboriginal children from homes and placing them with white families. And so, his was more an institutional apology. 

DUCKWORTH: That was historical probably, right? He was not directly responsible for that.

MAUGHAN: He was, yeah, not around at all, but said, “Let’s finally make an apology for this.” So, my point is there’s this vast difference in all the public apologies that she looked at. And she said the most successful apologies followed a similar pattern — and the least effective ones. Most successful, you focus on the victim. So you start by talking about who is hurt, talk very little about yourself or any personal justifications, and then you end by talking about how sorry you are. If possible, you make restitutions. Now, I know this is a little obvious, but she says that in all of her research, she was surprised at how few people could make an effective apology and said that of all of these she studied over this decade-plus period, less than a third of public apologies were effective with the public based on poll data.

DUCKWORTH: Meaning, I think, that, like, we don’t forgive those people. So, maybe if you want to say, what does it mean to be canceled? I mean, there’s no, like, dictionary definition, I think, that you could be like, “Oh, that’s what it means to be canceled.” But I think there’s an absence of forgiveness, like, you are not forgiven. And so, these are ways that you can be forgiven and welcomed back into the fold, these two research studies.

MAUGHAN: Yes, and these focus more specifically on apologies that led to forgiveness.

DUCKWORTH: But only one out of three did in that last study that you mentioned. Okay, so the things that she said is, like, you have to focus on the person who was wronged, not on yourself. And then you have to sincerely and abjectly admit wrongdoing.

MAUGHAN: Right, I mean she even goes so far as to use the word at one point, “mortification,” and defines it as “the unequivocal expression of shame, guilt, or remorse.” I mean, you have to express that you are mortified by what you did. So her advice is, is very simply: don’t wait. So, forget your ego, forget everything else, apologize immediately. Don’t apologize for what people thought; apologize for what you did. So, too many people come out and say, like, “I’m sorry that people misunderstood me.” “I’m sorry people misinterpreted that.”

DUCKWORTH: Right, or, “I’m sorry that you feel that way.” The classic, “I’m sorry that you’re so upset.” You’re like, “Oh my god, I want to kill you.”  

MAUGHAN: Turns out that doesn’t work.

DUCKWORTH: Turns out that just puts kerosene on the fire.

MAUGHAN: So don’t wait, and then apologize for what you did, not what people thought. Don’t give context. I thought that was interesting. It totally makes sense to me. She said, “People don’t care why you did it. Why you did it is less important than just expressing regret and remorse.” We don’t need context. We just need to say, “Hey, I’m so sorry. What I did was wrong.” So, when it comes to Bill Clinton’s apology, Cerulo she said the number one issue with his apology was one, it took so long to be made and then it was made so many times because he did such a bad job,  but eventually, he got to the National Prayer Service where he was doing an apology there and she and others say that that is the most effective one when he actually showed sorrow that looked genuine and actually even named Lewinsky, apologizing to her and for what he’d actually done. And I think Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on what it takes to successfully recover from a scandal. So, record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email it to us at NSQ@freakonomics.com and maybe we’ll play it on a future episode of the show. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your podcast app.

Still to come on No Stupid Questions: How does body language influence forgiveness?

MAUGHAN: If anyone got on their knees to apologize, that’s so dramatic, it just feels not useful. 

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Now, back to Mike and Angela’s conversation about recovering from scandal.

DUCKWORTH: So, you know, forgiveness is its own mystery, covered in enigma, you know, swirling in the unknown.   But if you just assume that there is such a thing as being forgiven, and we do sometimes do it, the question of like when we’re forgive— I mean, I think most people are not going to experience being canceled, but I think all of us will do something at some point where we wish to be forgiven. You know, this professor of economics at Vassar you mentioned, Ben Ho, I was like, why do I know that name? He was a co-author on the paper that was on Uber and on apologies.

MAUGHAN: Yes, yes!

DUCKWORTH: And I know Stephen Dubner and I’ve talked about this but I’ll just recap it, because it’s so clever. It was published in 2021. But the origin story is that John List, who was I think the chief economist for Uber at the time. And Uber had chief economists so that they could do really clever experiments that would help them have a better app. And John, one day, orders an Uber and it doesn’t come, and he’s really pissed off and he decides to study what happens when you’re a customer of this app and you’re just so angry because it failed you. And the operative question was like, is there anything Uber can do to make it up for you? Can they repair this ruptured relationship? So, when a rider on Uber had a trip that was in the bottom 5 percent of time of arrival for your particular geographic region, then you were then randomly assigned to different apology conditions. Some people would get an email that would say, like, “Here’s a $5 gift card to your next ride.” The basic apology was like, “Oh no, your trip took longer than we estimated.” There was a status apology, like, language like, you know, “We know our estimate was off.” So, sort of taking some responsibility. And there was a commitment apology, by the way, like, “We’re working hard to give you arrival times that you can count on.” And one of the major findings was, quote, “Money speaks louder than words.” I think when you said   an apology should be costly, to quote the paper, “The best form of apology is to include a coupon for a future trip.” But applying it personally —

MAUGHAN: Sorry, I just have this image of like, “Hey, I’m so sorry for something egregious.” And I’m like, “Here’s $20.” In a personal view, it sort of cheapens the apology, but I totally get it from a corporate standpoint.

DUCKWORTH: Yes, I don’t think you really want to, like, Venmo people directly after having, like, a blowout fight with your best friend or something.   But the larger point is the costliness. I think actually, just to speculate, why it is that that rings true to us or that moves us more is maybe that we have a little bit of an “eye for an eye.” You know, maybe it’s part of human nature to say, like, “You hurt me. It’s only right that you get hurt.”

MAUGHAN: There’s a silly Modern Family episode that I love where —

DUCKWORTH: I love Modern Family! They’re all silly, and they’re all amazing.

MAUGHAN: But there’s one where Gloria, who is this beautiful Colombian young-ish woman who married Jay, you know, the grandpa. And she’s basically the same age as Jay’s daughter. So, the stepmom and the daughter are basically the same age, and the stepdaughter, who’s Claire had at one point called Gloria a “gold digger.” And that comes out at a family dinner, and Gloria is upset and she said, “What do I need to do to prove to you all that I really just love your dad? I’m not in it for the money.” And she’s like, “Here, take the bracelets back, take the earrings, take the whatever.” And Claire comes up to the, the room and apologizes to Gloria and says, “Hey, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. When you first started dating my dad — I mean, look at you, look at him. You’ll understand why I had some concerns. What can I do to get your forgiveness?” And interestingly, in this “restitution” sense, Gloria says, “I want you to go jump in the swimming pool with all your clothes on.”

DUCKWORTH: Is that what she says? I don’t remember this. Okay. So, then what happens?  

MAUGHAN: The family goes outside and Claire is standing at the edge of the pool. And she’s like, “Wait, are you really going to make me get in? Like, I’ve shown I’m willing —”

DUCKWORTH: And you have to know Claire is, like, the uptight person who would not jump into the pool with her clothes on.

MAUGHAN: So she says, “Are you really going to make me do this? I’m standing at the edge of the pool. I’m showing you that I’m willing to jump in.” And Gloria just looks at her and says, “Yes. You have to jump in.” So, Claire jumps in with all her clothes on. And then next Jay, the older gentleman, pushes Gloria into the pool. And then the whole family jumps in. And this idea of restitution, while it wasn’t monetary, there was some cost that she had to pay, but it also turned into this joyful act of forgiveness where it was this memorable moment where the whole family is in the pool with all their clothes on —

DUCKWORTH: Okay, I’m going to go, like, way out on a limb and now interpret that episode of Modern Family as if it were a parable from the Bible, okay? So, like, if Claire were, like, dunked into the water, right, and then everybody’s, like, sort of laughing at her, that would not have been a good ending. But then what they showed is that she was truly welcomed back into the fold. Such is the brilliance of Modern Family. Yes, there’s a costly apology, but it then follows with true forgiveness and like, true acceptance. 

MAUGHAN: Versus a public shaming. 

DUCKWORTH: And I think what this research is showing is that there is some instinct we have that there has to be a true cost   to the person who was the transgressor — maybe it’s because we have some base instinct for an eye for an eye. We’re like, you have to jump into the pool and, like, be slightly humiliated in the way that you made me feel humiliated when you called me a “gold digger.”

MAUGHAN: Which by way, I don’t think those were equal offenses. I think “gold digger” is much more offensive than making someone jump in a pool. But, they had negotiated this, and I love how you said it was not a public shaming where everyone then ridicules Claire.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, it’s actually also not an “eye an eye.” By the way, a $5 coupon is not the same thing as, like, “Okay, now I’m going to make you five minutes late.” You know, “I’m going to make you miss a flight,” right? So, it’s not exactly that, but I still think it has this, like, base note of, like, restitution or symmetry. But then, I think for there to be — because you said this, I think, about Ben Ho’s research. Like, what makes an apology effective is not only that you can see that this costs me, but also this commitment that you have to follow through on in the future. I’m also thinking about other research on body language of apologies. There was an article in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about embodied remorse. And it’s about when you make a public apology, whether you include a physical display of remorse or you don’t. So, the two physical displays of remorse, one is getting down on your knees.

MAUGHAN: Oh, come on.

DUCKWORTH: I’m not kidding.

MAUGHAN: No, I believe you. But like, that doesn’t have a place in public apologies.

DUCKWORTH: You’re like, when has that happened?

MAUGHAN: And also, like, if anyone got on their knees to apologize, that’s so dramatic, it just feels not useful.

DUCKWORTH: You’d be like, oh, it must be insincere because it’s so melodramatic, almost.

MAUGHAN: Yeah. I’m, I’m really interested to hear more about this but I call immediate B.S. Like, who’s going to get down on their knees and apologize?

DUCKWORTH: In the paper that I’m talking about, there were descriptions of an actual historical event. Do you know about the Tokyo Electric Power Company and the nuclear disaster?  

MAUGHAN: I think there was one about 10 years ago. I don’t remember anything about an apology. I do remember that there were these elderly Japanese men who worked there who basically said, “To go fix this, we’re going to go in, because we’ve lived good lives, and we’re going to make sure that younger people don’t have to be exposed.” And it was this beautiful example of self-sacrifice in order to kind of bless generations. That’s what I remember, which has nothing to do with apologies or scandal. 

DUCKWORTH: I mean, I’ll say that in this experiment, you’re just a volunteer, right? Now, time has passed. But you’re told about this, you’re given factual information about what the disaster was, and then also, you know, the public statement that was made. You know, there was a, an image. And it says, you know, when you’re looking at these materials, like, “The picture below is a still, a still photo, from the press conference.” And then, there’s two conditions. In one condition, the representatives of the company are sitting at a desk in front of microphones, but in another condition, in the treatment condition — in the “embodiment” condition, they would say — in that condition, the representatives are away from their desks, kneeling with their palms pressed to the floor. So, these are both true photos, it’s just that they’re taken at different times. But, the embodiment condition — I don’t think American executives would do this.

MAUGHAN: That’s what I was going to say. I wonder culturally if there’s a very different sense of that.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, no, you’re not going to get anybody in, like, American culture to, like — it just, it’s not in our vernacular, right? Like, we don’t do this. So, it would be so odd. But they did have other studies where, instead of kneeling, there was, like, crying. So, there have been actual public apologies where the transgressor seemingly spontaneously — one could get more cynical than that — but they’re crying as they issue their apology. And either way, crying and kneeling are nonverbal.

MAUGHAN: Crying I buy, by the way. Like, I’ll be susceptible to that.

DUCKWORTH: You might even buy kneeling just within that cultural context, right?

MAUGHAN: Exactly. And that, I want to acknowledge. Mine was an ethnocentric reaction to that.  

DUCKWORTH: So, this embodiment — right, so seeing pictures of people like physically, either with crying or with kneeling, you know, showing their remorse — it actually did increase the viewer’s ratings of, like, how much you think this person does have remorse. In other research, I have generally found that, you know, sometimes it’s easy in the world of texting and email to miss the importance of nonverbal cues. This is one reason I think people will always need to have some face-to-face contact to have truly meaningful relationships. By the way, if you’re going to apologize to someone, I’m going to go out on a limb and say, don’t do it by text. Don’t DM the person. Because these nonverbal cues and also tone of voice in other research that I’ve done is, like, so important. You, you don’t get that in a text message. But the take-home of this multi-study investigation is that it does matter for how much people think you’re sorry.

MAUGHAN: You’re saying “it” being body language.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, this kind of embodiment. It also matters for being perceived positively. So, the transgressor, we have more empathy for them, et cetera. But one of the interesting things about this research is that this embodied remorse did not have any significant effect on being forgiven in, actually, any of the studies.

MAUGHAN: So, I just think it’s more sincere, but I’m not more likely to forgive you.

DUCKWORTH: And this is why forgiveness is so interesting to me. Like, what is it to be forgiven? Because   we can know that you’re sincere — and I’ve experienced this too. So, you know, I’ve shared with you before that Jason and I rarely have arguments, but when I get mad, I mean, I really — you’ve never seen it, but I get really, really, really mad. And I have wondered to myself, why is it that if Jason is sincerely sorry, I can see that he’s sincerely sorry, and yet I still don’t forgive him. Like, what is that? I don’t know, it’s something which is still beyond my understanding as a psychologist. I mean, I have to bring up: so my therapist, Dee, has given me this expression that has been so useful — and again, I have more interest in private apologies than public apologies. I mean, I hope I don’t have to ever make a public apology, but I think the dynamics are the same. So, Dee says that all relationships are such that there is going to be rupture and repair. And what she means by this is that any relationship — including ours, Mike, right? Like, that there will be a time where trust is ruptured, where understanding is ruptured. And then, they’re repaired. So, I think to me, the art of apologizing is about, you know, repairing that which has been ruptured, and I think these pro tips are great, you know, don’t wait, be sincere, don’t talk about extenuating circumstances, own it, commit. But for me, that phrase, “rupture and repair,” has been like a guiding light, because it also tells me that it’s normal. Maybe scandals are not normal, but like, you should expect friendships to be ruptured, and then you should expect them to be repaired. The thing that I’ve always been raised with is, like, forgiveness is always the right thing to do. So, if you have been either a victim or a bystander, like, the morally higher road is to forgive — maybe not to forget, but to forgive and to repair.

MAUGHAN: I will say, I’m with you 100 percent on a personal level. I know that I am human, and I know that I make mistakes all the time — hopefully not of the egregious variety. Like you, I hope there’s never a public apology.

DUCKWORTH: Hopefully, not at scandal-level.

MAUGHAN: Right. But yes, I think that we all have occasion to apologize every day. I will say that I hope I am very forgiving to others because I want people to be forgiving to us. And I wonder — again, maybe in the societal framework of scandal and being canceled —  I wonder if part of it is for some people we cancel them because their behavior is so obviously and systemically bad that we view that as a reflection of their character versus there are some individuals who committed an act.

DUCKWORTH: It was a terrible action, but they’re not a terrible person.

MAUGHAN: Right. And so we can put in context — Harvey Weinstein had perpetual, abusive, horrific actions against so many women over so many years that we have the context to say, “You’re not welcome back.” Whereas an individual who made a mistake, I hope we also have, as individuals and society, the willingness to say, “I’m not going to judge you by your worst day.” I hope people would grant that same grace or forgiveness to me.

DUCKWORTH: I mean, I think the thing that you’re saying is that there is no formula for successful recovery if this is like a deeply motivated, persistent character flaw. And if it isn’t, then there are these, like, tactical things. Like, if you really just screwed up, but you’re basically well intentioned, then apologize immediately and do it with body language and have a little skin in the game and commit to doing differently and follow through on that commitment. But if on the other hand you are Harvey Weinstein, we don’t have a recipe for you.

MAUGHAN: Yeah. I’m so sorry.  

Coming up after the break: a fact-check of today’s episode and stories from our NSQ listeners.

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And now, here’s a fact-check of today’s conversation:

David Gergen, a political commentator and professor emeritus of public leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, has served as advisor to four — not seven — former presidents: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton.

Mike explains that University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghous has found that politicians are more likely than their staff members to survive a scandal. We should note that he found that to be true for elected officials — as opposed to appointees — because of the extensive process that is often required to remove elected officials from their positions.

Mike also says that the majority of Americans “cyber bullied” former White House intern turned activist Monica Lewinsky. It’s true that most Americans did not view her favorably. A CNN poll from 1999 reported that 70 percent of those surveyed did not have a sympathetic view of Lewinsky. However, this doesn’t mean that they were cyberbullying her. In fact, a New York Times article from the same year stated that only 50 percent of U.S. adults used the Internet at that time.

Also, the colloquial verb “cancel” does, in fact, have an official definition. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it means, quote, “to publicly boycott, ostracize, or withdraw support from (a person, institution, etc.) thought to be promoting culturally unacceptable ideas.”

Finally, Angela misstates the incident that prompted University of Chicago economist John List to begin investigating effective apologies for Uber. The issue wasn’t that List’s ride never showed up. In fact, the driver did pick him up at his home, but instead of taking List to his intended location —a meeting of the American Economics Association at which he was scheduled to deliver the keynote speech — the driver ferried List around in circles for 25 minutes before arriving back at his house.

That’s it for the fact-check.

Before we wrap today’s show, let’s hear some thoughts about our previous episode on what it means to be evil.

Dan JATOVSKY: Hi, Mike and Angela. Your discussion on the nature of evil reminded me of a quote from Jean Renoir’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game. In the film, Octave, played by Renoir himself, says, there’s one thing that’s terrifying in this world, and that is that every man has his reasons. Renoir’s point is that dismissing a horrific act by labeling someone as “pure evil” can be strangely comforting. It allows us to sidestep the difficult work of considering ways to prevent such acts, or even the harder work of understanding the motivations behind the actions, much like Nabokov forces us to do in Lolita. The truly unsettling part, the terrifying thing, is realizing that each one of us might be capable of committing an evil act, given the right reasons.

Anonymous: This is in response to your episode on evil. I have to say, this is something I’ve been thinking about since childhood. And it’s probably my nature to try to understand people before making a blanket judgment on them. Perhaps this is helpful in my life. In many ways it’s led me to be open to many people in my life. But I am, um, currently going through the realization that the relationship that I’m currently in the middle of ending was an abusive one, and unfortunately I think my understanding that somebody isn’t just bad, somebody isn’t just a jerk — you know, there’s a reason, and there’s mental illness,  and there’s still goodness in that person — I almost look at it overly-nuanced and now I’m realizing that had I just called a spade a spade or just, you know, recognized what I was dealing with, I could have avoided a lot of pain for myself and my children. Anyhow,   that’s my answer today. Thanks. 

That was, respectively, Dan Jatovsky and a listener who would like to remain anonymous. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we’d love to hear your thoughts on scandal and public apologies. Send a voice memo to NSQ@Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show!

Coming up on next week No Stupid Questions: Is it okay to do the right things for the wrong reasons?

DUCKWORTH: A billionaire donates a lot of money to charity because it’s a tax write off. This billionaire has done a good thing, but for selfish reasons. 

That’s coming up on No Stupid Questions.

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No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippin with help from Jeremy Johnston. We had research assistance from Dalvin Aboagye. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter @NSQ_Show and on Facebook @NSQShow. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ@Freakonomics.com. To learn more, or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com/NSQ. Thanks for listening!

DUCKWORTH: I was assigned to be the, like, assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the assistant for Al Gore.