When and by whom are apologies considered? The effects of relationship and victim/observer standing on Japanese people’s forgiveness

Abstract

Existing studies report on tendencies for first-party victims of a transgression to be less considerate of apologies compared to third-party observers when deciding on forgiveness. The present research investigated the conditions in which such discrepancies arise, focusing exclusively on the factor of one's relational involvement with the transgressor. We presented Japanese participants (N = 116) with hypothetical cases of transgression, while varying on victim/observer standing, involvement with the transgressor, and the sincerity of presented apologies. As a result, the victim/observer discrepancy-where people who took the victim's perspective rather than the observer's perspective indicated decreased discrimination of the apology's sincerity-emerged under high relational involvement. We further examined the role of trait evaluation of the transgressor as a mediator of the effect of apology on forgiveness. The test revealed that high involvement strengthens the mediation effect among the observers, while weakening the mediation among the victims. Based on the obtained findings, we discussed insights into how the relational factor facilitates different motives in victims and observers, leading to discrepancies in their reactions.

Are the powerful retributive, forgiving, or both? The moderating role of power on people’s responses to norm violation

“…Participants then responded to the following measures on a scale of 1 ( Fully disagree ) to 9 ( Fully agree ). For the retributive motivation, we used the revenge subscale of the Transgression‐Related Interpersonal Motivation (TRIM) Scale (Japanese translation by Hashimoto & Karasawa, 2016; originally by McCullough et al., 1997). With four items (α = .85), participants marked the extent to which they want the perpetrators to get a deserved treatment such as punishment.…”

Volition Speaks Louder Than Action: Offender Atonement, Forgivability, and Victim Valuation in the Minds of Perceivers

“…Contrary to this, however, Hashimoto and Karasawa (2012) found that observers (but not victims) were more rather than less forgiving following coerced apology (i.e., when an offender apologized after the victim demanded it). The same researchers also later found that observers were generally more forgiving of sincere (vs. insincere) apologizers, whereas victims discriminated apology sincerity only when they were highly involved with offenders (Hashimoto & Karasawa, 2016).…”

“…Methodologically, several limitations of these previous studies also suggest more work is needed to understand how voluntary (vs. coerced) atonement affects third-party evaluations. First, coercion manipulations in past research have been relatively weak because interveners were offenders' peers who simply told them to apologize (Hashimoto & Karasawa, 2016;Risen & Gilovich, 2007) or a mediator who suggested that an apology might help (Robbennolt, 2013). Although reprimands from same-status peers are unfavorable, whether offenders felt "coerced" to apologize is questionable when serious consequences are absent (see Jehle et al, 2012).…”

“…Second, apology manipulations in some prior studies had confounds. For example, spontaneous versus coerced apologies differed on dimensions such as remorsefulness (Hashimoto & Karasawa, 2016), approach versus avoidance (e.g., rushing to the hospital to apologize vs. avoiding a victim; Hashimoto & Karasawa, 2012), and interveners' acknowledgment of harm (Jehle et al, 2012). Finally, because current guidelines for best practices advise against small sample sizes (Simmons et al, 2011), the fact that some prior studies had fewer than 20 observations per cell is potentially problematic.…”

Feeling Bad and Doing Good

“…On what basis, then, will third-party observers decide that offenders deserve forgiveness? Apart from work on public confession (Cerulo & Ruane, 2014; Gold & Weiner, 2000; Weiner, Graham, Peter, & Zmuidinas, 1991) and victim-observer asymmetries in discriminating apology sincerity (Hashimoto & Karasawa, 2012, 2016; Risen & Gilovich, 2007), no studies to our knowledge have tackled this subject.…”