Victim Sensitivity, Apology, And The Impact Of Offense Severity On Forgiveness

Forgiveness has always been discussed in the literatures of philosophy and religion. But it wasn't attached great importance by psychologists until the last twenty or thirty years. Since then, people began to study forgiveness from the perspective of psychology. Previous studies have pointed out that forgiveness is mainly affected by both individual factors and situational factors. In this study, dependent variable is situational forgiveness.And our aim is to explore how JS-victim (the justice sensitivity of victim), apology and offense severity influence the situational forgiveness. We used 2 (JS-victim:high, low) × 2(apology:yes, no) ×2(offense severity:high, low) three-factor randomized experiment design. Participants completed a 10-item measure of justice sensitivity from the victim's perspective, firstly. Afterward they were randomly assigned to one of four possible transgression scenarios. After imagining the scenario, participants completed the TRIM-12(Tansgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-12-Item Form).According to these results, we can get this study's conclusions as follows:1.JS-victim affects situational forgiveness. Persons high in JS-victim lessly forgive others;2.Apology affects situational forgiveness. Transgressors who provide apology are more likely to be forgiven;3.Offense severity affects situational forgiveness.The more severe the transgression is, the less forgiveness will be given;4.For the person high in victim sensitivity, apology can effectively promote victims' forgiveness; however, for the person low in victim sensitivity, the effect of apology on forgiveness is not obvious;5.When the offense is median severe, apology can effectively promote victims' forgiveness; but when offense isn't severe, the effect of apology on forgiveness is not obvious:6.No matter how severe the transgression is, forgiveness of the person high in JS-victim is always less then the high in JS-victim.