| Awe is an emotional response when individuals face a vast objective phenomenon and experiences a stimulus beyond his/her current cognitive scope.Previous studies have found that awe can cause individuals to shift their focus from themselves to the outside world,allow individuals to experience a more ambitious external sensation.This reduction in self-attention and increased attention to the outside world can promote individuals’ attention to others,increase prosocial and reduce aggressive behavior.However,there is no corresponding research on whether awe can promote interpersonal forgiveness.In human society,conflict events are inevitable,and how to promote interpersonal forgiveness after conflict is of great significance.This study combines questionnaires,experiments,and computational modeling to explore the effects of awe on interpersonalforgiveness.Study 1 used a self-edited open questionnaire of awe,the Trait Awesome Scale(TAS),and the Forgiveness Trait Scale(TFS)to investigate the differences of the awe traits in demographic variables,and explore the relationship between trait awe and traits forgiveness.Study 2 used two experiments to investigate the effects of induced awe on subsequent interpersonal forgiveness.Experiment 1 uses video tasks to initiate awe,combined with the Emotional Assessment Scale(EAS),the Awesome Component Assessment Scale(AIES),the Self-Awareness Assessment Questionnaire(SAS),the Offensive Situation Questionnaire(OSS),and Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-12 Item Form(TRIM-12),examining the impact of awe on situational interpersonal forgiveness,and the role of the small self in this effect.Experiment2 uses the rejection rate in the ultimatum game(UG)and forgiveness of betrayal in the prisoner’s dilemma game,investigate the effect of awe on interpersonal forgiveness in the real economic interaction situations.In addition,the behavior data in UG was computational modeling to further explore the potential mechanisms betweenaweandinterpersonalforgiveness.The research results suggest that:(1)there were significant differences in trait awe,whether they have religion,whether they are only children or not;(2)there was a significant positive correlation between trait awe and trait forgiveness,indicating that the higher trait awe of individuals,the higher the level of trait forgiveness;(3)compared with pleasure and neutral emotions,awe emotion can promote interpersonal forgiveness.Specifically,the individuals who were induced awe show more forgiveness behaviors in subsequent offensive situations and actual economic interactions;(4)awe emotion induced a small self-effect(viz,decreased self-attention),and part of experimental results show that the small-self mediated the effect of aweoninterpersonalforgiveness.This current study confirms the role of awe in promoting interpersonal forgiveness,and extends previous studies about positive effect of awe.In addition,it provides some reference for interpersonal conflict resolution. |
