The Development of Forgiveness Across Diverse Cultures

• In Event: Expanding the Study of Early Forgiveness: Intentions, Individual Differences, and Culture

Abstract

Forgiveness — broadly defined as a prosocial change toward a transgressor — is a powerful feature of social life, allowing for the restoration of cooperative relationships that support human societies. Despite its importance, however, we know relatively little about how this ability develops in early life, and the extent to which early forgiveness decisions vary across cultures.

Here, we explored the developmental origins of forgiveness across two studies. In Study 1, we investigated forgiveness in 5-to-10 year-old children (N = 257) from the United States, varying transgressor intent and remorse in a behavioral task that pits punishment against forgiveness. In Study 2, we utilized a variant of the same task with children in five different countries (N =400), namely the United States, Canada, Uganda, Peru, and in Ecuador among the forager-horticulturalist Shuar.

In our forgiveness task, children were shown a novel resource: a scratch sheet that would reveal rainbow colors when drawn on. Participants were told they could have five of these sheets; however, the experimenter then “discovered” that they had already been used by another child. The participant then had to make a decision: they could throw as many of the sheets as they wanted into the trash, or return as many as they wanted to the transgressor. We considered the number of sheets returned as a measure of forgiveness.

In Study 1, we manipulated the information the participant had about whether the transgression was accidental or intentional, and whether the transgressor was remorseful or not, in a 2x2 design with a baseline. Children learned this information through the inclusion of a note in the box which was allegedly from another experimenter. We found that baseline levels of forgiveness were high, suggesting children assumed the best of transgressors in the absence of information about intent and remorse. We also found age-related increases in sensitivity to intent (B=0.10, SE=0.05, p=0.03), but not remorse (B=0.01, SE=0.05, p=0.79), such that older children were more likely to forgive accidental transgressions.

In Study 2, we used the Accidental+Remorse condition of the previous task and expanded our sample to four more countries. Overall, we found that 5-13 year-old children returned a high number of sheets to the transgressor (M = 3.67, SD = 1.38) with no significant variation across countries. However, we also found an interaction between age and country [LRT, χ2, p = 0.01], such that children in Canada and Peru tended to become slightly more forgiving with age, while children in Ecuador, the US, and Uganda remained relatively unchanged as they aged.

Taken together, our results suggest that children’s forgiveness behaviors become increasingly sensitive to relevant social cues, such as intent, across age. Our cross-cultural work further suggests that these early patterns are strikingly similar across diverse societies. As forgiveness is an important tool in the human social toolkit, exploring the ways in which this ability develops across age can help us better understand the early roots of human cooperation.

Authors

• Dorsa Amir, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Richard E Ahl, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hannah Bolotin, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Bogese, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gorana Gonzalez, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tara C Callaghan, St. Francis Xavier University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lawrence S. Sugiyama, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author