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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children must learn to develop and maintain long-term relationships with others. This process requires overcoming misunderstandings and transgressions and thus requires forgiveness (McCullough, 2008). Recent research has established that forgiveness emerges as early as the preschool years (e.g., Oostenbroek & Vaish, 2019). Yet this early research has been limited in scope, with a focus on accidental transgressors, normative development, and WEIRD cultures (primarily the US). This symposium brings together research that advances the study of early forgiveness beyond this limited scope. Paper 1 examines children’s responses to intentional transgressors. It shows that by age 6 years (but not 5), children forgive accidental transgressors more than intentional ones, and remorseful intentional transgressors more than unremorseful ones. Paper 2 examines how variation in children’s reactive aggression predicts their forgiveness. Using a novel, child-friendly repeated prisoner’s dilemma, the authors found that children with high reactive aggression were less likely to forgive a defector than those with low reactive aggression. Paper 3 presents the first cross-cultural examination of early forgiveness. The authors used a novel transgression paradigm to examine forgiveness in 5- to 13-year-old children in five diverse societies: US, Canada, Uganda, Peru, and a forager-horticulturalist society in Ecuador. Results showed high levels of forgiveness across societies with only minor cultural variation in developmental timing. Finally, our discussant will synthesize these papers and their contribution to our understanding of the cognitive and social mechanisms underlying forgiveness development, and point to critical next steps for the emerging science of early forgiveness.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Amrisha Vaish, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

Discussant

• Peter R. Blake, Boston University

Individual Presentations

• Beyond Accidents: Young Children’s Forgiveness of Intentional Transgressors - Presenting Author: Carolynn Elizabeth McElroy, Gallaudet University; Non-Presenting Author: Caroline Kelsey, Boston Children’s Hospital; Non-Presenting Author: Janine Oostenbroek, University of Queensland; Non-Presenting Author: Amrisha Vaish, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

• Forgiveness in a Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma for Dhildren - Presenting Author: Meia Chita-Tegmark, Tufts University; Non-Presenting Author: Megan Flom, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Kimberly J Saudino, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Peter R. Blake, Boston University

• The Development of Forgiveness Across Diverse Cultures - Presenting Author: Dorsa Amir, Boston College; Non-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