宽宏大量与睚眦必报:宽恕和报复对愤怒的降低作用

本研究通过3个实验比较宽恕和报复对愤怒的降低作用。采用假设情景的方法,实验1通过在冒犯行为之后直接启动宽恕或报复,结果显示宽恕比报复对愤怒的降低作用更好,并且对消极情绪也具有降低作用;实验2考察在不同冒犯行为意图下宽恕与报复对愤怒的降低作用,结果显示不管是有意而为还是无心之过的冒犯行为,宽恕对愤怒的降低作用均要优于报复。实验3要求被试在冒犯行为后进行宽恕或报复,结果显示宽恕和报复对愤怒均有降低作用,但是宽恕的降低效果要显著优于报复。研究显示,对于冒犯行为后的愤怒感,宽恕的降低作用优于报复。

Turn the other cheek vs. a tooth: The reducing effects of forgiveness and revenge on anger

Forgiveness and revenge are two common strategies for coping with offence. Previous research finds that forgiveness is positively associated with positive psychological outcomes, such as positive affect, life satisfaction and happiness, while negatively associated with negative psychological outcomes, such as negative affect, anxiety and depression. On the other hand, the outcomes of revenge are a bit controversial. Some researchers believe revenge has an adaptive function, such as restoring the equilibrium between victim and offender. But more research reveals that revenge has a dark side. Individuals with a penchant for revenge have a higher level of negative affect and depression and a lower level of life satisfaction. They also tend to have more aggressive behavior. Although most psychological therapists and researchers tend to view forgiveness and revenge as two opposite strategies, there is no empirical research comparing the different effects of these two strategies. Thus, in the present study, three experiments were designed to examine the reducing effects of forgiveness and revenge on anger. Experiment 1 examined effect of anger reduction after priming forgiveness or revenge. Participants were assigned randomly to two conditions: forgiveness priming or revenge priming. They read a hypothetical scenario describing paper plagiary in a college classroom (the offender plagiarized the victim's paper and handed it to the teacher without notification and the victim proved that he/she was innocent finally). Participants in the forgiveness condition read that the victim forgave the plagiarist while those in the revenge condition read that the victim carried out revenge by asking the professor to punish the plagiarist severely. All participants were asked to imagine this story happening to them and rated the level their anger and positive and negative emotion. Participants under the forgiveness condition reported a lower level of anger than those under revenge condition. They also had a lower level of negative affect. But both conditions did not differ on positive affect. Experiment 2 was designed to replicate the findings of experiment 1. Furthermore, intentions of the offensive behavior were also considered in experiment 2. The experiment procedure was similar to experiment 1. Participants read intentional (similar to experiment 1) or unintentional offence scenarios (the offender damaged the victim's gift unintentionally) followed by forgiveness or revenge. Regardless of the intentions of offensive behavior, participants under forgiveness condition reported a lower level of anger than those under revenge condition again. They also reported a lower level of negative affect. Those who read the intentional offence scenarios also reported a higher level of anger. Furthermore, participants who read the intentional offence scenario did not differ on positive affect whether followed by forgiveness or revenge. But those who read the unintentional scenario followed by forgiveness reported higher level of positive affect than those read the unintentional scenario followed by revenge. Experiment 3 examined the direct anger reduction of forgiveness and revenge. After reading the scenario similar to experiment 1, participants were assigned randomly to forgiveness or revenge conditions. They were asked to forgive or revenge the offender and wrote down how to forgive/revenge, how they felt during forgiving/ revenging and the reasons of forgiving/revenging. They rated the anger before and after forgiving/ revenging. Results revealed that although both strategies could reduce anger effectively, the forgiveness strategy did a much better job on reducing anger than the revenge. The findings of the present study implied that after an offence, forgiveness and revenge both could reduce anger, but forgiveness did a better job.