The Effects of Apology and Perspective Taking on Interpersonal Forgiveness: A Dissonance-Attribution Model of Interpersonal Forgiveness

Abstract

The author investigated (a) the effects of a victim's perspective taking and a transgressor's apology on interpersonal forgiveness and (b) forgiveness as a mode of dissonance reduction. Before the participants read a scenario describing a situation in which they imagined being mistreated by a classmate, the author randomly assigned them to 1 of 4 perspective-taking conditions: (a) recalling times when they had mistreated or hurt others (i.e., the recall-self-as-transgressor condition); (b) imagining how they would think, feel, and behave if they were the classmate (i.e., the imagine-self condition); (c) imagining how the classmate would think, feel, and behave (i.e., the imagine-other condition); or (d) imagining the situation from their own (i.e., the victim's/control) perspective. After reading the scenario, the participants read an apology from the classmate. The participants in the recall-self-as-transgressor condition were significantly more likely than those in the control condition to (a) make benevolent attributions, (b) experience benevolent emotional reactions, and (c) forgive the transgressor. The relationship between the perspective-taking manipulation and forgiveness was mediated by the benevolent attributions and positive emotional reactions experienced by the victims.

Apologies and Medical Error

“…The messages contained in an apology can have powerful effects for both the person offering it and the recipient. In particular, apologies influence the ways in which people make judgments of responsibilitydecreasing the blame that is attributed to another and decreasing the likelihood that the cause of the injury is viewed as something that is internal to and controllable by the other person [47,51]. Similarly, apologies influence estimates of the likelihood that the injury-producing scenario will recur; the apology is interpreted as a signal that steps will be taken to avoid similar consequences in the future [16,44,46].…”

“…Similarly, apologies influence estimates of the likelihood that the injury-producing scenario will recur; the apology is interpreted as a signal that steps will be taken to avoid similar consequences in the future [16,44,46]. Apologies also have positive effects on expectations and intentions for a future relationship between the parties [38,39,44,46], play a role in restoring trust [38,39], reduce negative emotional reactions such as anger [16,44,46,51], induce favorable physiological responses in both parties [59], and reduce antagonistic responses [16,42,44,46].…”

On the Role of Empathy in Customer-Employee Interactions

“…Additionally, an individual's disposition to empathize influences responsibility attributions for negative outcomes (Sulzer and Burglass 1968), as empathic individuals would be able to sense a given situation and to attribute situational factors rather than personal dispositions as causes for an unpleasant encounter. Further, empathic individuals are more apt to make benevolent attributions when an unfavorable event occurs, thus forgiving the actor for the discomfort they have experienced (Takaku 2001).…”

Evidence for a distinct forgiveness prototype: Convergent and discriminant validity

“…Research on forgiveness is growing rapidly, including the roles played by situational factors (McCullough, Fincham, & Tsang, 2003;Takaku, 2001), intrapersonal factors and individual differences (Bradfield & Aquino, 1999;Brown, 2003;Konstam, Chernoff, & Deveney, 2001) and dyadic relational factors (Fincham & Beach, 2002;Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, & Hannon, 2002;Friesen et al, 2005). However, as mentioned earlier, there has been relatively little interest in a possible consensual lay representation of forgiveness, and only a handful of studies have examined forgiveness from a lay perspective.…”