Asymmetries between victims' and transgressors' perspectives following interpersonal transgressions

When interpersonal transgressions occur, the involved parties try to understand what occurred and how justice should be restored. However, research has documented that victims and transgressors often diverge in their accounts of what transpired. In this paper, I review and summarize empirical research on victims' and transgressors' asymmetric perceptions of interpersonal transgressions and the different justice‐restoring responses each party subsequently desires. By conceptualizing transgressions in terms of the social roles of victim and transgressor, I contend that justice responses can be thought of as attempts to correct inequitable distributions of material and symbolic resources. This social exchange perspective enables us to understand each party's motives and how various justice responses might satisfy them. I argue that because of these asymmetric perspectives, reconciliation is difficult, and conflict is liable to be perpetuated rather than resolved.     

Victim and Perpetrator Accounts of Hurtful Messages: An Actor–Partner Interdependence Model

This study examined how message characteristics and relational turbulence correspond with victim and perpetrator experiences of hurtful messages. Romantic partners described 2 events: one where each of them was a victim of the partner's hurtful message. Trained judges evaluated qualities of hurtful messages and participants reported relationship qualities, intensity of hurt experienced as a victim, and the partner's hurt feelings when the respondent was the perpetrator. Third‐party ratings of hurtfulness were associated with victims' intensity of hurt. For females, relational turbulence was associated with their intensity of hurt as victims. For males, relational turbulence was associated with their perception of the female victims' hurt. The authors discuss the implications for the work on hurtful messages and relational turbulence.     

A little help from our friends: Informal third parties and interpersonal conflict

Individuals who have been hurt by an interpersonal transgression often turn to others for support, but very little is known about the function of these informal third parties. In this study, a qualitative approach was used to analyze victims' written narratives describing a transgression in order to better understand what role informal third parties may play. The range of responses that informal third parties made to victims, and how victims felt, both about the transgressor and in general, was examined. Those who forgave the transgressor tended to receive different types of informal third‐party responses than those who did not forgive, and informal third parties seemed to help victims feel better by reducing their uncertainty and increasing their sense of belongingness.     

Self-punishment promotes reconciliation with third parties by addressing the symbolic implications of wrongdoing

Self-punishment is a highly costly—and potentially harmful—way transgressors can respond to a wrongdoing. In this research, we propose that people might punish themselves in part because it has a communicative social function. Three studies using hypothetical vignettes showed that self-punishment facilitates reconciliation with third party observers by addressing the symbolic implications of wrongdoing. Specifically, self-punishment establishes a moral value consensus and/or diminishes offender status/power, and through this, increases third party perceptions of justice and transgressor remorse, and the third party's willingness to reconcile. This effect was robust to manipulations designed to make third parties question the sincerity of the self-punisher's intention. Self-punishment thus serves a beneficial interpersonal function by repairing social bonds between transgressors and their peers.     

Three‐year‐old children intervene in third‐party moral transgressions

We investigated children's moral behaviour in situations in which a third party was harmed (the test case for possession of agent‐neutral moral norms). A 3‐year‐old and two puppets each created a picture or clay sculpture, after which one puppet left the room. In the Harm condition, the remaining (actor) puppet then destroyed the absent (recipient) puppet's picture or sculpture. In a Control condition, the actor acted similarly but in a way that did not harm the recipient. Children protested during the actor's actions, and, upon the recipient's return, tattled on the actor and behaved prosocially towards the recipient more in the Harm than in the Control condition. This is the first study to show that children as young as 3 years of age actively intervene in third‐party moral transgressions.     

Manipulating Morality: Third‐Party Intentions Alter Moral Judgments by Changing Causal Reasoning

The present studies investigate how the intentions of third parties influence judgments of moral responsibility for other agents who commit immoral acts. Using cases in which an agent acts under some situational constraint brought about by a third party, we ask whether the agent is blamed less for the immoral act when the third party intended for that act to occur. Study 1 demonstrates that third‐party intentions do influence judgments of blame. Study 2 finds that third‐party intentions only influence moral judgments when the agent's actions precisely match the third party's intention. Study 3 shows that this effect arises from changes in participants' causal perception that the third party was controlling the agent. Studies 4 and 5, respectively, show that the effect cannot be explained by changes in the distribution of blame or perceived differences in situational constraint faced by the agent.     

I feel you feel what I feel: Perceived perspective‐taking promotes victims' conciliatory attitudes because of inferred emotions in the offender

In the context of bullying in a nursing workplace, we test the argument that an offender's perspective‐taking promotes victim conciliation, mediated by perceived perspective‐taking, that is, the extent to which the victim perceives the offender as taking their perspective. Perceived perspective‐taking facilitates the attribution of moral emotions (remorse, etc.) to the offender, thereby promoting conciliatory victim responses. However, perceived perspective‐taking would be qualified by the extent to which the severity of consequences expressed in the offender's perspective‐taking matches or surpasses the severity for the victim. In Studies 1 and 2 (Ns = 141 and 122, respectively), victims indicated greater trust and/or forgiveness when the offender had taken the victim's perspective. This was sequentially mediated by perceived perspective‐taking and victim's inference that the offender had felt moral emotions. As predicted, in Study 2 (but not Study 1), severity of consequences qualified victims' perceived perspective‐taking. Study 3 (N = 138) examined three potential mechanisms for the moderation by severity. Victims attributed greater perspective‐taking to the offender when the consequences were less severe than voiced by the offender, suggesting victims' appreciation of the offender's generous appraisal. Attributions of perspective‐taking and of moral emotions to the offender may play an important role in reconciliation processes. Key outcome: To the extent that victims perceive the offender as taking their perspective (perceived perspective‐taking), they infer that the offender feels more moral emotions, prompting victims to be more conciliatory. Perceived perspective‐taking benefits from the offender over‐stating the consequences to the victim.     

Counterfactuals and roles: mock victims' and perpetrators' accounts of judicial cases

Three studies assessed the influence of differential perspective taking on counterfactual thinking. In Study 1 male and female subjects were asked to play the role of, respectively, perpetrator and victim in a rape case, and to give their own account of the event. Analysis of spontaneous counterfactuals showed a main tendency to focus on actions more than inactions and on controllable more than uncontrollable elements. However, this tendency was moderated by the subject's role and the counterfactual target. While victims focused on perpetrators' controllable actions more than on their own, perpetrators did not focus on victims' controllable actions more than on their own; they focused on victims' controllable inactions instead. In Study 2, where males and females were asked to reverse their roles, and where prompted as well as spontaneous counterfactuals were analysed, the same results were found. Further evidence for generality of these results was found in Study 3, where an assault case instead of a rape case was taken into account. These findings support the view that counterfactual mutability may be influenced by role‐based motivations, as well as by role‐based expectations regarding how active a party is supposed to have been in an event. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Indirect effects of supportive communication during conversations about coping with relational transgressions

Researchers investigating relational transgressions have minimally explored the role of third‐party personal network members in the coping process. It is argued that supportive messages during conversations about coping with relational transgressions are associated with transgressed individuals' perceived stress and feelings about the transgression. Results from a study involving conversations between 50 pairs of personal network members suggest that participants' perceptions of stress and negative emotions decreased from pre‐ to postinteraction. By testing an indirect effects model, it was found that emotion support had a negative indirect association with participants' perceptions of stress, anger, and dejection related to the transgression because of quality of support. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed, and directions for extending research on communicative coping are provided.     

The Influence of Third Party Power and Suggestions on Negotiation: The Surface Value of a Compromise1

A simulated organizational dispute tested the influence of third party power and settlement suggestions on negotiation. Six different types of third party suggestions were tested: Integrative (highest possible value to both parties), compromise (the prominent solution equally favorable to both parties), unintegrative (lowest possible value to both parties), favorable (more value to subject than to opponent), unfavorable (more value to opponent than to subject), and no offers. Additional subjects bargained with no third party. The results suggest that the potential of a third party to impose a settlement influenced disputant perceptions of power and desire for third party involvement, but had only weak effects on communication processes and little effect on offer proposals. While integrative suggestions led to greater acceptability of the third party, compromise suggestions positively influenced the appearance of fairness and the use of rationality and exchange messages. Receipt of an unfavorable suggestion resulted in less favorable ratings of third party acceptability, greater perceptions of bias, and the use of more assertive messages and fewer upward appeals aimed at the third party than did receipt of a favorable suggestion. Implications for managerial dispute resolution behavior and subsequent perceptions of satisfaction and justice are discussed.     

Victims' Stories: A Call to Care

In her book Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights, Diana Meyers offers a careful analysis of victims' stories as a narrative genre, and she argues that stories in this genre function as a call to care: they both depict a moral void and issue a moral demand, thereby fostering the development of a culture of human rights. This article, while finding Meyers's articulation of this idea compelling, questions Meyers's account of how victims' stories do their moral work. Whereas Meyers argues that victims' stories are complete narratives, characterized by a distinctive form of closure, it suggests that the moral power of victims' stories may lie in part in their open‐endedness or lack of closure. In telling their stories, victims engage their audiences in a new moral relationship and implicitly give them a role to play in bringing about the moral (and narrative) closure they seek.     

Values-based Political Messages and Persuasion: Relationships among Speaker, Recipient, and Evoked Values

The persuasive power of values-based political messages may depend on recipients having (1) shared values with the speaker (a type of personal identity match ); (2) shared political party identifications with the speaker (a type of social identity match ); and/or (3) expectations about values traditionally associated with different political parties (an expectancy violation/confirmation ). The independent and joint effects of these factors on the success of a persuasive message were examined, using the theoretical framework of dual-process models of persuasion. Participants (N = 301), classified according to their party identifications and primary value orientations, read a political speech that varied by argument quality, speaker party, and values evoked. Results indicated that value matching promotes close attention to the message, while party mismatching increases message rejection. These effects depend to some extent, however, on expectancies about values traditionally associated with different parties. Participants especially rejected messages from rival party members when the speaker evoked unexpected values. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the efficacy of values-based political communication.     

Be Fair,Your Employees Are Watching: A Relational Response Model of External Third‐Party Justice

There is growing theoretical recognition in the organizational justice literature that an organization's treatment of external parties (such as patients, community members, customers, and the general public) shapes its own employees’ attitudes and behavior toward it. However, the emerging third‐party justice literature has an inward focus, emphasizing perceptions of the treatment of other insiders (e.g., coworkers or team members). This inward focus overlooks meaningful “outward” employee concerns relating to how organizations treat external parties. We propose a relational response model to advance the third‐party justice literature asserting that the organization's fair treatment of external parties sends important relational signals to employees that shape their social exchange perceptions toward their employer. Supporting this proposition, in two multisource studies in separate healthcare organizations we found that patient‐directed justice had indirect effects on supervisory cooperative behavior ratings through organizational trust and organizational identification.     

Third Parties and the Social Scaffolding of Forgiveness

It is widely accepted that only the victim of a wrong can forgive that wrong. Several philosophers have recently defended “third‐party forgiveness,” the scenario in which A, who is not the victim of a wrong in any sense, forgives B for a wrong B did to C. Focusing on Glen Pettigrove's argument for third‐party forgiveness, I will defend the victim's unique standing to forgive, by appealing to the fact that in forgiving, victims must absorb severe and inescapable costs of distinctive kinds, a plight that third parties do not share. There are, nonetheless, significant, even essential, roles played by third parties in making forgiveness possible, reasonable, or valuable for victims of serious wrongs. I take a closer look at the links between victims, wrongdoers, resentment, and forgiveness in showing why the victim alone can forgive.     

Righteous or self‐righteous anger? Justice sensitivity moderates defensive outrage at a third‐party harm‐doer

While bystanders' outrage over moral transgressions may represent a genuine desire to restore justice, such expressions can also be self‐serving—alleviating guilt and bolstering one's moral status. Four studies examined whether individual differences in observer justice sensitivity (JS_O) moderate the degree to which outrage at third‐party harm‐doing reflects concerns about one's own moral identity rather than justice per se. Among participants low (vs. high) in JS_O, feelings of guilt predicted greater outrage and desire to punish a corporation's sweatshop labor practices (Studies 1 & 2). Furthermore, affirming one's personal moral identity reduced outrage and support for punishing a corporate harm‐doer among those low, but not high in JS_O (Studies 3 & 4). Similar moderation was absent for other forms of justice sensitivity and just world beliefs. Effects were not explained by negative affect, empathy, personal harm, or political orientation. Results suggest that JS_O uniquely differentiates defensive and justice‐driven moral outrage (150/150).     

Sometimes it's easier to forgive my transgressor than your transgressor: effects of subjective temporal distance on forgiveness for harm to self or close other

The present research extended previous work on the third‐party (un)forgiveness effect—the tendency to be more forgiving for transgressions committed against the self than a close other—by testing how subjective temporal distance of first‐ and third‐party transgressions might influence the forgiveness process. Participants recalled a time in which they or a close other was harmed by another person, and was then made to feel either distant from or close to the transgression. As predicted, third‐party (un)forgiveness was observed when transgressions felt distant, but not when transgressions felt recent. Implications for restoring and maintaining positive relationships are discussed.     

How Lay Third Parties Weigh Legitimacy and Sanctions in a Side-Taking Dilemma: A Study among Chinese and Dutch Employees

Lay third parties sometimes react to an interpersonal dispute by taking sides. In this paper, we investigate the interaction effects of lay third parties’ moral and expedient orientations on the relationship between perceived legitimacy (or expected negative sanctions) and their intention of side‐taking with a legitimacy party (or a sanction party). Seventy‐nine Chinese and 77 Dutch employees were presented with a scenario describing a conflict dilemma between one party who has more legitimacy claims but less negative sanctions and the other party who has less legitimacy claims but more negative sanctions. The results showed that moral orientation by itself has a reinforcing effect on the positive link between perceived legitimacy and siding with a legitimacy party. In addition, in both countries, the relationship between expected negative sanctions and side‐taking with a sanction party was moderated by a joint effect of the moral and the expedient orientations. That is, for lay third parties with a weakly moral orientation and a strongly expedient orientation, an increase in negative sanctions led to more side‐taking with a sanction party. For those lay third parties who were weakly moral and weakly expedient oriented, strongly moral and strongly expedient oriented, or strongly moral and weakly expedient oriented, the above‐mentioned link was not positive any more. Confrontés à un conflit interpersonnel, les tiers non concernés réagissent parfois en prenant parti. Dans cet article, nous étudions les effets d’interaction des orientations morales et opportunistes de tiers non impliqués sur la relation entre la légitimé perçue ou les sanctions négatives attendues et leur intention de se ranger aux côtés d’un groupe légitime ou d’un groupe puissant. On a présentéà 79 salariés chinois et 77 salariés néerlandais un scénario décrivant un dilemme conflictuel entre un groupe qui disposait de plus de légitimité, mais de sanctions négatives moindres et un autre groupe qui disposait de moins de légitimité, mais de sanctions négatives plus fortes. Les résultats montrent que l’orientation morale exerce par elle‐même un renforcement sur la liaison positive entre la légitimité perçue et le fait de se ranger aux côtés d’un groupe bénéficiant de la légitimité. De plus, dans les deux pays, la relation entre les sanctions négatives attendues et le fait de choisir le groupe puissant était régulé par un effet conjugué des orientations morales et opportunistes. Ce qui signifie que pour des tiers pourvus d’une orientation morale déficiente et d’un grand opportunisme, une augmentation des sanctions négatives incite à prendre plutôt parti pour le groupe puissant. La relation ci‐dessus mentionnée n’est nullement positive pour les tiers à la morale et à l’opportunisme faibles, à la morale et à l’opportunisme forts, ou à la morale forte et à l’opportunisme faible.     

Intergroup reconciliation: Instrumental and socio-emotional processes and the needs-based model

We discuss the complexity of the concept of intergroup reconciliation, offer our definition of it, and identify instrumental and socio-emotional processes as distinct processes that facilitate reconciliation. We then present the needs-based model, according to which conflicts threaten victims’ sense of agency and perpetrators’ moral image, and social exchange interactions that restore victims’ and perpetrators’ impaired identities promote reconciliation. We review empirical evidence supporting the model and present extensions of it to (a) contexts of structural inequality, (b) “dual” conflicts, in which both parties transgress against each other, and (c) contexts in which the restoration of positive identities is external to the victim–perpetrator dyad (e.g., third-parties’ interventions). Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

A needs-based model of reconciliation: satisfying the differential emotional needs of victim and perpetrator as a key to promoting reconciliation

The authors propose that conflict threatens different psychological resources of victims and perpetrators and that these threats contribute to the maintenance of conflict (A. Nadler, 2002; A. Nadler & I. Liviatan, 2004; A. Nadler & N. Shnabel, in press). On the basis of this general proposition, the authors developed a needs-based model of reconciliation that posits that being a victim is associated with a threat to one's status and power, whereas being a perpetrator threatens one's image as moral and socially acceptable. To counter these threats, victims must restore their sense of power, whereas perpetrators must restore their public moral image. A social exchange interaction in which these threats are removed should enhance the parties' willingness to reconcile. The results of 4 studies on interpersonal reconciliation support these hypotheses. Applied and theoretical implications of this model are discussed.     

Harmful transgressions qua moral transgressions: A deflationary view

One important issue in moral psychology concerns the proper characterisation of the folk understanding of the relationship between harmful transgressions and moral transgressions. Psychologist Elliot Turiel and associates have claimed with a broad range of supporting evidence that harmful transgressions are understood as transgressions that are authority independent and general in scope which, according to them, characterises these transgressions as moral transgressions. Recently many researchers questioned the position advocated by the Turiel tradition with some new evidence. We entered this debate proposing an original, deflationary view in which perceptions of basic-rights violation and injustice are fundamental for the folk understanding of harmful transgressions as moral transgressions in Turiel's sense. In this article we elaborate and refine our deflationary view, while reviewing the debate, addressing various criticisms raised against our perspective, showing how our perspective explains the existent evidence, and suggesting new lines of inquiry.