Why do people say sorry when they have nothing to do with the problem?

I is a natural human tendancy ..People out of sympathy or out of pity they use the word "sorry" for any mistake or problem they are not a cause of

I think they just want to show sympathy for you, that they can relate to your pain and they are sorry for it.

we say sorry to hear such a bad news. i think that's how it started. we hear about it and we say that we are sorry about what happened because we could have done something to make him/her feel better about it.

Words can have different meanings. Being sorry could mean being apologetic if we did wrong to somebody. It could also mean being sympathetic if something bad has happened to the people around us. If a friend says he's sorry you broke your leg, he is being sympathetic.

Word, like expression may mean differently according to the different situation the person may be into. "Sorry" may mean "we greive with you" when a close person who is intimate to us lost a loveone. It may mean "we understand" when a person say "sorry" to a person who has done explaining his side of the problem and we readily resolve that its ok now. "Sorry", may mean "unacceptable" to a person who doesn't want to receive the feeling that the other person wants to readily offer. Words, like action, is part of the whole situation. For me its not words or action that always count. It's the intention that would suffice the word and actions meaning to a situation.