Interrelationship Among Injured Parties' Attributions of Responsibility,Appraisal of Appropriateness to Forgive the Transgressor,Forgiveness, and Repentance

The purpose of this research was to examine the interrelationship among attributions of responsibility, repentance, victims' appraisal of the appropriateness of forgiving the transgressor, and forgiveness. It is argued that an injured party's appraisal of how appropriate it is to forgive the transgressor is important in understanding discrepant theoretical and empirical observations regarding the relationship between responsibility judgments and forgiveness. In one nonexperimental/naturalistic study and 2 experiments, we confirmed predictions that responsibility attributions would positively relate with a victim's appraisal of how appropriate it is to forgive the transgressor, and negatively with forgiveness. In addition, all 3 studies confirmed that a victim's appraisal of the appropriateness to forgive the transgressor explains the relationship between responsibility judgments and forgiveness.     

A dyadic assessment of forgiveness in intimate relationships

This study investigated forgiveness by examining couples’ recollections and perceptions of specific incidents of transgressions in their relationships. The results replicated previous research but also produced some novel findings. Results showed that more positive attributions and relationship quality independently predicted higher internal forgiveness, whereas expressed forgiveness was related only to relationship quality. Overall, the sample was negatively biased in their perceptions of their partner's forgiveness, but those participants who tended toward a positive bias were happier with their relationships as were their partners. Results are discussed in terms of prior research and theories of forgiveness and related social judgments in intimate relationships.     

The Consideration of Rape: The Effect of Target Information Disparity on Judgments of Guilt1

We hypothesized that increasing the amount of individuating but case‐irrelevant information about a target in a date‐rape trial (i.e., either the defendant or the victim/witness) would increase attributions of responsibility for that target and would thus influence judgments of defendant guilt. As predicted, merely adding trivial information, such as the victim's age, college major, and city of residence, to the rape trial vignette decreased judgments of guilt for the defendant; whereas adding corresponding information regarding the defendant increased judgments of his guilt. Ratings of perceived similarity to defendant and victim correlated significantly with responsibility and guilt, but were unaffected by the information manipulation. We suggest that target information increases target salience, which results in an increase of attributions of responsibility.     

Attributions of Responsibility in Cases of Sexual Harassment: The Person and the Situation1

When observers learn about a case of sexual harassment, it is common for them to assign responsibility to the victim and perpetrator. However, attributions of responsibility are complex judgments often based on variables beyond the case's details (e.g., attitudes). The present study examined how victim response, victim and perpetrator gender, and participant gender and gender‐role attitudes influenced participants' attributions. Victim and perpetrator responsibility were measured before and after participants knew the victim's reaction in order to examine whether new information would alter participants' attributions. Consistent with previous research, gender differences were found for attributions and attitudes. Victim and perpetrator gender did not affect attributions. However, biases appeared in open‐ended responses. Finally, only females made distinctions of responsibility across victim reaction condition.     

No genuine self‐forgiveness without accepting responsibility: Value reaffirmation as a key to maintaining positive self‐regard

Measures of self‐forgiveness that merely focus on the outcome of positive self‐regard risk neglecting the process through which offenders restore it. They may thus tap pseudo self‐forgiveness where offenders downplay their responsibility for the wrongdoing. For genuine self‐forgiveness, the process should instead involve an attenuation of the negative link between responsibility acceptance and positive self‐regard. In this paper, we examine how acts of value reaffirmation facilitate genuine self‐forgiveness. In Study 1, a role‐play experiment (N = 90), participants either confessed their wrongdoing to the victim or not. Although responsibility acceptance was strongly negatively related to reported self‐forgiveness (i.e., self‐regard), this relationship was tempered when participants confessed their wrongdoing to the victim and, through this, reaffirmed the violated values. In Study 2, a longitudinal study referring to self‐reported transgressions (N = 74), responsibility acceptance was negatively related to self‐forgiveness measures as well as self‐esteem when offenders showed little value reaffirmation, but not when they more strongly reaffirmed the violated values. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synchronic and diachronic responsibility

This paper distinguishes between synchronic responsibility (SR) and diachronic responsibility (DR). SR concerns an agent’s responsibility for an act at the time of the action, while DR concerns an agent’s responsibility for an act at some later time. While most theorists implicitly assume that DR is a straightforward matter of personal identity, I argue instead that it is grounded in psychological connectedness. I discuss the implications this distinction has for the concepts of apology, forgiveness, and punishment as well as the way in which this distinction can be used to defend quality of will accounts of responsibility against objections involving psychological manipulation. I argue that the intuition that a manipulated agent is not responsible can be explained by appeal to the conditions of DR and, as such, does not unproblematically shed light on the conditions of SR.     

The Effect of Preemptive Forgiveness and a Transgressor's Responsibility on Shame,Motivation to Reconcile,and Repentance

The primary aim of this research was to examine the effects of an injured party's preemptive forgiveness (grudge, none, explicit, implied) on a transgressor's repentance. We also explored the moderating role of a transgressor's judgment of responsibility (low, high) and the mediating role that feelings of shame and motivation to reconcile play in the preemptive forgiveness → repentance process. The results of two experiments showed that different types of forgiveness had different effects on repentance and prosocial conduct. In Study 2, we extended these findings by examining the moderating role that judgment of responsibility plays and the mediating role that shame and motivation to reconcile plays in the preemptive forgiveness → repentance process. These experiments show that, relative to holding a grudge, no forgiveness, and explicit forgiveness, the most effective preemptive prosocial strategy was implied forgiveness, particularly when judgments of responsibility were low. In addition, a stepdown analysis suggests that the effects of forgiveness and responsibility on repentance are mediated by a transgressor's shame and motivation to reconcile.     

Freedom,moral responsibility,and the failure of universal defeat

Proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism hold that manipulation scope (how many agents are manipulated) and manipulation type (whether the manipulator intends that an agent perform a particular action) do not impact judgments about free will and moral responsibility. Many opponents of manipulation arguments agree that manipulation scope has no impact but hold that manipulation type does. Recent work by Latham and Tierney (2022, 2023) found that people's judgments were sensitive to manipulation scope: people judged that an agent was less free and responsible when a manipulation was existential (impacting at least one but not all agents) than when the manipulation was universal (impacting every agent). This study examines people's judgements about existential and universal manipulation cases that involve both intentional and non-intentional outcomes. We found that manipulation scope also affects people's free will and responsibility judgments in manipulation cases involving both intentional and non-intentional outcomes. Interestingly, we also found that manipulation type influences the effect that manipulation scope has on people's free will judgments but not their moral responsibility judgments, which indicates that people's free will and responsibility judgments can come apart. This puts pressure on the prevalent assumption that judgments about free will and moral responsibility are conceptually bound together.     

Forgiveness,forbearance, and time: the temporal unfolding of transgression-related interpersonal motivations

The investigators proposed that transgression-related interpersonal motivations result from 3 psychological parameters: forbearance (abstinence from avoidance and revenge motivations, and maintenance of benevolence), trend forgiveness (reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases in benevolence), and temporary forgiveness (transient reductions in avoidance and revenge, and transient increases in benevolence). In 2 studies, the investigators examined this 3-parameter model. Initial ratings of transgression severity and empathy were directly related to forbearance but not trend forgiveness. Initial responsibility attributions were inversely related to forbearance but directly related to trend forgiveness. When people experienced high empathy and low responsibility attributions, they also tended to experience temporary forgiveness. The distinctiveness of each of these 3 parameters underscores the importance of studying forgiveness temporally.     

On the origin of personal causal theories

Detecting the causal relations among environmental events is an important facet of learning. Certain variables have been identified which influence both human causal attribution and animal learning: temporal priority, temporal and spatial contiguity, covariation and contingency, and prior experience. Recent research has continued to find distinct commonalities between the influence these variables have in the two domains, supporting a neo-Humean analysis of the origins of personal causal theories. The cues to causality determine which event relationships will be judged as causal; personal causal theories emerge as a result of these judgments and in turn affect future attributions. An examination of animal learning research motivates further extensions of the analogy. Researchers are encouraged to study real-time causal attributions, to study additional methodological analogies to conditioning paradigms, and to develop rich learning accounts of the acquisition of causal theories.     

Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation,Free Will,and Moral Responsibility

If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent , but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attributions of responsibility to manipulated agents. Experiments 2–7 isolate which features of manipulation drive this effect, a crucial issue for both philosophical debates about free will and attributions of responsibility in situations involving social influence more generally. Our results suggest that “bypassing” a manipulated agent's mental states generates the greatest reduction in responsibility, and we explain our results in terms of the effects that one agent's mental states can have on the counterfactual relations between another agent and an outcome.     

Forgiveness in marriage: The role of relationship quality,attributions, and empathy

Italian husbands (n= 79) and wives (n= 92) from long‐term marriages provided data on the role of marital quality, affective reactions, and attributions for hypothetical partner transgressions in promoting forgiveness. Structural equation modeling revealed that, as hypothesized, positive marital quality was predictive of more benign attributions that, in turn, facilitated forgiveness both directly and indirectly via affective reactions and emotional empathy. Unexpectedly, marital quality did not account for unique variance in forgiveness. Compared to husbands, wives’ responsibility attributions were more predictive of forgiveness, whereas empathy was a better predictor of forgiveness in husbands than in wives. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the burgeoning therapeutic literature on forgiveness.     

The Concept of Responsibility and Determinants of Responsibility Judgment in the Japanese Context

As in the case of the English word responsibility, the Japanese equivalent sekinin is an over-used term with multiple meanings. At least two distinctive usages are noted for the Japanese concept of responsibility: 1) to describe duties or obligations pertaining to a person's role or position; and 2) to assign blame or sanction to someone when an untoward occurrence is observed. By utilizing a number of peculiar incidents that resulted in some harm, the present study has found that subjects' responsibility judgments in terms of the second type of usage were largely determined by the following two factors: 1) the causal relationship of the agent's act to the harm that ensued; and 2) the morality of the act itself without regard to consequences. In the cases where these two aspects contradicted, especially where the blameworthy act was not directly connected to the harm, judgments about the agent's responsibility were found to diverge among subjects. It was also shown that subjects most often referred to these aspects in elucidating the reasons for attributing responsibility to, or negating the responsibility of, the agent.     

Negative internal causal attributions of a specific offense and forgiveness

Causal attributions are important social‐cognitive predictors of forgiveness. This article presents the Transgression Attribution Questionnaire (TAQ), a measure of one's negative internal causal attributions of a specific offense. In 4 studies, scores on the TAQ showed initial evidence of estimated internal consistency, temporal stability, and construct validity. Negative internal attributions for the cause of a transgression predicted lower levels of empathy and forgiveness. Furthermore, scores on the TAQ predicted forgiveness over and above the hurtfulness of the offense, relationship commitment, and a general measure of internal causal attributions in relationships. The current research bridges research on internal causal attributions and forgiveness. Implications for the social‐cognitive study of forgiveness and the measurement of causal attributions are discussed.     

Responsibility attribution by groups and individuals: The effects of the interaction episode

Studied the effects of formal and informal interaction styles on the extremity of responsibility attribution judgements by groups. The stimuli were eight scenarios describing typical ‘life dilemmas’, incorporating the manipulation of the following two variables in a 2 × 2 design: (a) the risky-cautious decision taken by the actor in response to the dilemma, and (b) the outcome of the decision (success-failure). Subjects (N = 130) provided judgements about the attributed responsibility of the actor, and their perception of the actor and the situation first as individuals, followed by (a) formal or (b) informal group discussion, leading to consensus judgements. Results showed that group attributions were significantly more extreme than individual attributions, but only following the informal group interaction. The actors' riskiness and success were also significantly related to the size of the extremity shift. The findings are discussed in terms of the importance of the social context and the specific interaction episode in attribution judgements, and the possible implications of the results for such real life decision-making groups as committees and interviewing panels are considered.     

The Effects of Apology and Perspective Taking on Interpersonal Forgiveness: A Dissonance-Attribution Model of Interpersonal Forgiveness

Abstract

The author investigated (a) the effects of a victim's perspective taking and a transgressor's apology on interpersonal forgiveness and (b) forgiveness as a mode of dissonance reduction. Before the participants read a scenario describing a situation in which they imagined being mistreated by a classmate, the author randomly assigned them to 1 of 4 perspective-taking conditions: (a) recalling times when they had mistreated or hurt others (i.e., the recall-self-as-transgressor condition); (b) imagining how they would think, feel, and behave if they were the classmate (i.e., the imagine-self condition); (c) imagining how the classmate would think, feel, and behave (i.e., the imagine-other condition); or (d) imagining the situation from their own (i.e., the victim's/control) perspective. After reading the scenario, the participants read an apology from the classmate. The participants in the recall-self-as-transgressor condition were significantly more likely than those in the control condition to (a) make benevolent attributions, (b) experience benevolent emotional reactions, and (c) forgive the transgressor. The relationship between the perspective-taking manipulation and forgiveness was mediated by the benevolent attributions and positive emotional reactions experienced by the victims.     

To connect is to be influenced: What determines a third‐party's forgiveness attitudes to conflicting groups' violent partisan members?

The present research seeks to answer the question of what determines an uninvolved third party's forgiveness attitudes toward conflicting groups' violent partisan members. Specifically, Bangladeshi participants read a fictitious interview with a radicalized Palestinian who declared his intention to avenge himself against Israelis for his personal and collective plight by carrying out a suicide bombing attack. Findings reveal that an empathy manipulation (high empathy = other focused or low empathy = objective focused) influenced participants' forgiveness attitudes towards the radicalized Palestinian such that in the high empathy condition participants were more forgiving of the target than participants in the low empathy condition. Moreover, while the strength of their religious identification (Islam) played no significant role, participants' tendency to attribute the target's decision to situational factors fully mediated the effects of empathy on forgiveness.     

Personal Responsibility for Tornado Preparedness: Commitment or Choice?1

A review of the literature reveals that personal responsibility assumed for one's behavior clearly affects behavioral outcomes for a variety of situations, and that personal responsibility is in turn affected by a wide variety of variables. However, limited research has been conducted to determine exactly what personal responsibility fundamentally entails. While duty, moral obligation, choice, and commitment have been suggested as being integral to the concept of responsibility, few investigations have systematically varied more than one of these variables in a single experiment. The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of both choice and commitment on personal responsibility assumed for and behavioral intentions to engage in tornado preparedness. Results indicate that both choice and commitment were required to generate personal responsibility for and subsequent intentions to engage in tornado preparedness. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Physical Size Stereotyping as a Mediator of Attributions of Responsibility in an Alleged Date-Rape Situation1

This research focuses on male and female observers' attributions of responsibility to a female accuser and a male accused of rape. Observers read 1 of 2 scenarios in which the accuser was either smaller or larger than the accused and then made judgments concerning each person's responsibility for what happened. The data indicated that the larger accuser was considered more responsible than the smaller accuser and the larger accused was perceived to be more responsible than the smaller accused. Females attributed more responsibility and had less sympathy, respect, and liking for the accused, whereas males attributed more responsibility and reported more negative attitudes toward the accuser. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for legal and health-care professionals.