By Alan Hall | Excerpted from the January 2017 Socionomist
More than 20 years ago, Elliott Wave International identified the relationship between historic apologies and positive social mood. In the August 1995 issue of The Elliott Wave Theorist, Peter Kendall said that in bear markets, “anger, fear and the urge to destroy overcome the social conscience.” But bull markets bring “remorse”—a trait born of the larger trend toward inclusion.
In the November 2010 issue of The Socionomist, Alan Hall observed that historic apologies had increased dramatically in the previous 15 years. But in the January issue, he notes that the apology wave is waning. Read more below.
In a June 2014 article for Playboy magazine, actor Gilbert Gottfried complained about the public pressure to apologize. For a decade, he had been the voice of the duck on Aflac’s famous insurance commercials—until he tweeted jokes about the Japan tsunami of March 2011, attracted global animosity and was promptly fired. …
Gottfried may have felt public pressure to apologize, but comedians working decades from now may feel considerably less heat. History’s largest-ever wave of apology has crested and is ebbing, largely in sync with global social mood. This suggests that an unprecedented era of remorse, repentance and contrition is ending, along with the positive mood that fueled it. …
Socionomists have found that a large-degree trend toward positive social mood beginning in the early 1980s produced a historic wave of political, religious and “community-focused apologia.” … Recent data show that the apology tsunami is now subsiding as global social mood becomes negative. …
Political apologies registered small peaks in 1955 and in 1965 during rapid advances in Dow/gold. They exploded far higher when social mood accelerated positively in the late 1980s. Political apologies increased throughout the 1990s as global social mood trended strongly positively. The numbers of apologies in the two datasets peaked in 2003 and in 2005, lagging the year-2000 stock market peaks. …
This delay is in keeping with Elliott Wave International’s observation that the actions of governments and other organizations tend to lag the stock market. Apologies briefly increased as our three sociometers rallied from their 2011-2012 lows, but they have since resumed their decline. …
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