Effects Of Forgiveness Or Punishment On Subsequent Transgression In Imagined And Real Attacks

People in daily life will inevitably be hurt by others,and when the violation(or transgression)occurs,the different feedbacks received may affect aggressor's subsequent behavior,especially subsequent violations.Therefore,the mechanisms and conditions for the role of different feedbacks when it comes to subsequent transgressions have become an issue concerned by researchers.So far,some researchers believe that forgiving the aggressors can prevent them from harming the victims again in the future,because the forgiveness of the victims will make the aggressors feel the victims are still willing to work on and keep the relationship with them,and the aggressors would be willing to respond to their kindness for this at the same time and behave more benevolent behaviors.However,some researchers found that forgiveness will make the aggressors worse,because they don't have to take the responsibility and serious consequences for their actions.They could be even more unscrupulous and feel free to hurt those victims.In view of some studies has found punishment can also help people establish a series of behaviors through operational conditional reflexes,acquire new behaviors,correct bad behaviors,at the same time reduce transgression of the aggressors and the overall level of inequality within group,this study is intended to explore forgiveness and punishment which can be more effectively to reduce the aggressors' future violations.In Experiment 1,the researchers simulated a typical interpersonal transgression process by the scenario imagination,and evaluate whether the different feedbacks based on the imaginary aggression affect the subsequent willingness to violate.We led participants imagine that they were a college student.Because they made another student lose the hope of studying abroad,they wrote a letter to apologize.Then the student wrote a letter back to the participants.There are three ways of this letter,namely the condition of forgiveness,the condition of no forgiveness or punishment,and the condition of no forgiveness but punishment.Finally,let the participants imagine that if he has to hurt the student again,how about the willingness he would like to hurt the student and the other emotions.In Experiment 2,we use the Taylor Aggression Paradigm to induce participants' real attack behavior in the lab,and then how the different feedbacks affect the subsequent attack behavior's intensity.The participants have to choose the sound their opponents would hear in the case of their response time shorter.The experiment has two parts.When the first part is over,the participants will receive a feedback from their partner and then begin the second part of the experiment.We will compare the amount of choices between two parts to discover which condition can significantly reduce the participants' violations.On the basis of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2,Experiment 3 further explores the different feedbacks obtained by individuals after the violations,and whether they are restricted by the object of subsequent violations.In other words,when the object of subsequent violations is extended to a third party,is it still affected by the feedback from the second party on the pre-order violation.To this end,Experiment 3 still uses the Taylor Aggression Paradigm,but the partner of second round interacted with the participants is different from the first round.There was only one participant in the entire interaction process of Experiment 2 and Experiment 3.The probability of win or lose was set by the computer program in advance,each of which was 50%,but the participants were unknown in the experiment.In the end,we found(1)the participants who were forgiven reduced more transgression than those who were punished in the second part of the experiment.(2)The main reason for this change was the participants who were forgiven felt more guilty.(3)The effect of the feedback from the first partner can migrate to the second partner,which result support the opinion that guilt can make people be more sensitive to social norms.This research enriches the previous theoretical researches,and further understand the extent and mechanism of forgiveness and punishment affecting transgressions.