I am not an expert of human psychology, but I have been thinking and I decided to think out loud on this forum
people often use the sentence "I am sorry", but sometimes it doesn't really get to me especially since I have repeatedly heard it on the same offence. At first I thought I had trust issues,but then I have watched this particular TV program called crime watch, and after interviewing the criminals about the crime, the anchor always pops the question "how do you feel now that you have been caught" and the response is always "I feel very bad",as if it the response was planned ,this has made me ask, if the criminals were not caught,would they have felt bad about their crime? Would they have continued perpetrating the crime? Ponder on that
Back to the topic, every human has at one time or the other been hurt, and the sentence "I am sorry" pops up,but most times are they remorseful?. Let me paint you two scenerios
1) A man is so overwhelmed with guilt of cheating on his wife and decides to cut the affair, he may or may not tell his wife, but the thing is he did on his own volition
2)A man who is caught cheating on his wife
We all know the second man will claim to be sorry, but my question is, would he have continued cheating if he wasn't caught?

use urself as a case study, in my opinion remorse is more effectictive.

I believe when a person is truly remorseful, they don't wait to be caught before making it right but in the case of being caught before the confession, they would be willing to do anything to make it right, like when I caught my ex cheating on me for the fourth time, he said he was sorry, but because I wasn't convinced he was sorry, I insisted he called the lady and breakup with her in my presence, hehehehe he ended up calling me crazy an immature, that was when I knew he wasn't remorseful, it was just going to be another "I am sorry" episode and he will still continue