Department of Management and Organization.
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2020 Aug;119(2):344-366. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000215. Epub 2019 Aug 29.
A single transgressor sometimes harms more than just 1 victim. We examine a previously undocumented social cost of forgiving following these multiple-victim transgressions. We find that nonforgiving victims believe that other victims who forgive the common transgressor make their decisions to withhold forgiveness appear ungenerous. Faced with this threat, nonforgiving victims report that other forgiving (vs. nonforgiving) victims have overclaimed their standing to forgive the common transgressor and consequently perceive these forgiving victims as demonstrating a lack of benevolence toward them. Nonforgiving victims also perceive forgiving victims to have relatively little integrity. We test these social costs of forgiving in the field and in the lab across 7 studies plus a meta-analysis of 5 of those studies. We also identify 1 route by which forgiving victims can attenuate the social costs they face: they can affirm other victims' decisions to withhold forgiveness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
有时，一个作恶者的伤害不止波及一个受害者。我们探讨了在这些多受害者越轨事件后，被宽恕者所承受的一个先前未被记录的社会成本。我们发现，未被宽恕的受害者认为，宽恕共同作恶者的其他受害者会让自己选择不宽恕的决定显得吝啬。面对这种威胁，未被宽恕的受害者会认为其他宽恕（而非不宽恕）的受害者夸大了他们宽恕共同作恶者的理由，因此认为这些宽恕的受害者对自己不友善。未被宽恕的受害者还认为宽恕的受害者相对缺乏正直。我们通过 7 项研究以及对其中 5 项研究的元分析，在现场和实验室中检验了宽恕的这些社会成本。我们还确定了宽恕受害者减轻所面临社会成本的一个途径：他们可以肯定其他受害者选择不宽恕的决定。
