[roryokane]

It can hurt to apologize just in case. Maybe not in the case of strangers, but if you do it repeatedly with acquaintances, they could hypothetically start hearing all of your apologies as fake, even the sincere ones.

[jtheory]

True, if it's a knee-jerk action.

If you get in the habit of empathizing with the people around you, though, and you do it well, that will continue to be valuable.