 Apologies are frequently valued, not merely as acknowledgements of past wrongdoing and gestures of respect to victims, but also as providing evidence of a positive change in the wrongdoer or in the wrongdoers’ group. Parties who have come to take responsibility for and repudiate past wrongful actions are better candidates for renewed relationships of cooperation and trust (de Greiff 2008). This potential is undermined, however, where apologies are overly vague, incomplete, or appear insincere. One may reasonably question whether mere admissions that “mistakes were made” (which do not own up to responsibility or specify what the mistakes themselves were) or that the speaker “regrets if anyone took offense” (which leaves open the question of whether the action was really wrong) qualify as apologies at all (Smith 2008). The importance of being sensitive to the gendered aspects of apology has also been highlighted (MacLachlan 2013).