Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 May;205:105081. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105081. Epub 2021 Jan 18.
Forgiveness is a powerful feature of human social life, allowing for the restoration of positive cooperative relationships. Despite its importance, we know relatively little about how forgiveness develops during early life and the features that shape forgiveness decisions. Here, we investigated forgiveness behavior in children aged 5-10 years (N = 257) from the United States, varying transgressor intent and remorse in a behavioral task that pitted punishment against forgiveness. We found that baseline levels of forgiveness are high, suggesting that children assume the best of transgressors in the absence of information about intent and remorse. We also found age-related increases in sensitivity to intent but not remorse, such that older children are more likely to forgive accidental transgressions. Because forgiveness is an important tool in the human social toolkit, exploring the ways in which this ability develops across age can help us to better understand the early roots of human cooperation.
原谅是人类社会生活的一个有力特征，它可以恢复积极的合作关系。尽管原谅很重要，但我们对于它在儿童早期是如何发展的以及影响原谅决策的因素了解甚少。在这里，我们通过一项行为任务研究了来自美国的 5-10 岁儿童（N=257）的原谅行为，该任务在惩罚和原谅之间进行了权衡，涉及到侵犯者的意图和悔恨。我们发现，原谅的基线水平很高，这表明在没有关于意图和悔恨的信息的情况下，儿童会假定侵犯者的意图是好的。我们还发现，随着年龄的增长，对意图的敏感性会增加，但对悔恨的敏感性不会增加，因此年龄较大的儿童更有可能原谅意外的侵犯。因为原谅是人类社交工具包中的一个重要工具，所以探索这种能力随着年龄的增长而发展的方式可以帮助我们更好地理解人类合作的早期根源。
