Researchers at Dartmouth College discovered that saying sorry can make the rejected person feel like they should offer forgiveness, even if their feelings don't match up.
And the wounded party is more likely to take revenge.
The study's authors examined more than 1000 participants, to understand how different individuals reacted to being snubbed.
Firstly, the participants, including 600 members of the public and more than 480 psychology students, were asked to respond to various situations in which they would reject a social invitation from a person named 'Taylor.'
They were given different social scenarios to turn down, such as a date, a roommate who wanted to continue living with the participant as a lease was set to expire and lunch plans with a work colleague.
For all the situations, participants had to come up with a good way of rejecting Taylor.
The researchers then had volunteers read the rejections and evaluate how hurtful each response was.
They found that 39 percent of participants were found to have issued an apology in their rejections, which were found to increase hurt feelings.
Apologies for the lunch and roommate scenarios, in particular, made volunteers feel worse.
Their feelings were only marginally hurt in the party scenario, and not at all in the date rejection.
In another experiment, researchers tested whether people would seek revenge after a rejection.
The team had 135 participants meet face-to-face after they had been rejected by a planted volunteer, who they were set up to work with on a series of group tasks.
The volunteer would politely reject the participants' request to work on the group task, with some participants receiving an apology and some not.
One of the group tasks involved a hot sauce taste test, and rejected participants were asked to decide how much hot sauce the group had to taste.
In some instances, the planted volunteer would say that they hated spicy food before leaving the room.
Those who received an apology were more likely to take revenge and give the group more hot sauce, even if they knew that their peer hated the condiment.
'We know that people often don't want to admit that they have hurt feelings, so in some of the studies, we looked at how much people wanted to seek revenge,' explained lead researcher Dr Gili Freedman
'As predicted, rejections that contained the words 'I'm sorry' led to worse outcomes than rejections without apologies; participants allocated more hot sauce,' the authors wrote.
'The participants believed the confederate did not like spicy food and, therefore, the greater allocation likely reflected a hostile act designed to hurt the confederate.'
Finally, researchers tested whether rejections with apologies affect forgiveness.
Participants were shown videos of real-life rejections, some with apologies and some not.
The study found that people were more likely to feel as if the rejected party should express forgiveness if an apology was given.
While an apology may have good intentions, the researchers believe it can also be a selfish act.
Dr Freedman said: 'It is possible that rejectors may feel better about themselves if they apologize.
'We intend to examine when rejectors are motivated to feel better about themselves and when they would rather put the rejectee's needs ahead of their own.'
The study's findings were published last month in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
REVENGE IS SWEET
A study, published in January, from the University of Kentucky showed we feel happier after taking action against someone who did us wrong.
Researchers asked 156 participants to write an essay about a personal experience.
Their essays were critiqued by another participant.
In one group, the researcher pretended to be a participant and gave everyone bad feedback, including 'one of the worst essays I have ever read'.
The mood of the participants was measured before and after they were given the chance to express their aggression.
Their aggression was released by sticking pins in a virtual voodoo doll while imaging it was the person who critiqued their essay.
Not only did the mood improve those who stuck the voodoo doll with pins, but there was a point where their mood was indistinguishable from the other group of subjects who received nice feedback
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