(NewsCore) - Women say sorry more often than men, while men are less likely to believe they need to apologize for their actions, according to a Canadian study reported by USA Today on Tuesday.
Psychologists at the University of Waterloo in Ontario found men have a "higher threshold" for behaving badly.
They also don't see eye to eye with women as to what is right and wrong, the study published online in the journal "Psychological Science" found.
"The gender differences just sort of leapt out at us," psychology professor Michael Ross, who co-authored the study, said. "It was too big to ignore. It was just very clearly there."
The psychologists used 186 people for their study and divided them by gender.
The participants were asked to keep a diary outlining instances when they apologized for their actions or felt they should have.
Women were found to have said sorry more often than men, although men were found to have said sorry just as often if they believed they were actually in the wrong.
"Part of the reason women apologize more is they have a lower threshold for what is offensive behavior," lead author of the study Karina Schumann said.
"It's not that men are always being insensitive or that women are always seeing offenses that aren't.
"It's a different standard between men and women on how offensive behavior is, and sometimes results in men not apologizing for something that the female thinks they should."
