Forgiveness and its determinants depending on the interpersonal context of hurt

Abstract

Children and adolescents encounter different hurtful experiences in school settings. How these events are processed (e.g., whether they think that the transgressor was hostile) is likely to depend on the relationship with the transgressor. In this study, we examined how adolescents (58 girls and 35 boys, mean age = 14.03 years, SD = 0.60) dealt with the hurt caused by someone they liked or disliked. Our findings show that the hurt caused by a disliked transgressor is likely to lead to more negative cognitive (e.g., hostile attributions), affective (e.g., feelings of anger), and motivational (e.g., avoidance/revenge) outcomes than the hurt caused by a liked peer. In addition, we found that associations between cognitive processes and avoidance/revenge were mediated by feelings of anger, but only when the transgression occurred in the context of disliking. These results highlight the importance of studying how adolescents process hurtful experiences in different relational contexts.

Introduction

A considerable proportion of students are subjected to frequent harassment (e.g., physical, verbal, and relational aggression) at school. Interpersonal offenses, however, are not limited to overt and covert acts of aggression but can also include criticism, betrayal, and other forms of hurtful behaviors. Although there is a considerable amount of research showing detrimental effects of hurtful experiences, such as victimization, on individuals’ well-being, less is known about how children and adolescents process interpersonal hurt (e.g., the degree to which they attribute hostility to the offender, ruminate about the offense, and feel anger or sadness) and how these processes determine the degree to which they forgive their offender. Thus, this study focused on a relatively neglected construct in research on aggression and victimization among children and adolescents, interpersonal forgiveness, and also tested the putative processes (cognitive, affective, and interpersonal) that increase the likelihood of forgiveness.

According to McCullough and colleagues (1998), two motivational systems govern the degree to which people forgive an offender for a hurtful action. The first one, avoidance motivation, reflects a flight tendency (see also Miller, Pedersen, Earleywine, & Pollock, 2003) and involves feelings of hurt that motivate victims to avoid the offender. The second one, revenge motivation, reflects a fight tendency that is characterized by feelings of injustice and a desire to get back at the offender. Forgiveness occurs when victims no longer want to avoid and get back at the offender. Indeed, these two motivational constructs together account for a large percentage of the variance (e.g., 48%) in single-item assessments of forgiveness (McCullough et al., 1998).

Being able to forgive the harm-doer is, in turn, related to both inter- and intrapersonal benefits. For instance, forgiveness increases the probability of reestablishing closeness (McCullough et al., 1998) and reconciliation (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997) and decreases the likelihood of future offenses (e.g., Wallace, Exline, & Baumeister, 2008), and thus it can deescalate a cycle of aversive interactions between two individuals. Forgiveness can also enhance greater satisfaction with life, increase positive (and decrease negative) affect, and boost state self-esteem (Karremans, Van Lange, Ouwerkerk, & Kluwer, 2003). Yet, it is not always easy to forgive. In fact, getting back at the offender, in one way or another, could be considered a built-in biological response (McCullough & Witvliet, 2002) and is related to the equality principle (Stillwell, Baumeister, & Del Priore, 2008). In other words, individuals who have been victims of some form of transgression believe that getting back at the offender, or making the offender feel what they felt, is justified and fair. Unfortunately, revenge motivation, if actualized in aggressive retaliation, can give rise to a vicious circle of negative exchanges (see Stillwell et al., 2008) and can put children at risk for further attacks (Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2004). In contrast, avoidance motivation can possibly lead to deescalation of conflict and termination of any active relationship between the transgressor and victim.

Two sociocognitive constructs, attributions and rumination, are central in determining the course of events following an interpersonal offense. In fact, McCullough and colleagues (1998) considered such sociocognitive processes to be the most proximal determinants of forgiveness. Attributions have received considerable attention in studies on social information processing and aggression (Crick & Dodge, 1994). For instance, when children interpret (hypothetical or actual) ambiguous actions by peers that yield negative results as hostile, they are more likely to feel angry (Graham, Hudley, & Williams, 1992) and choose response options that are more aggressive (Graham et al., 1992, Peets et al., 2007) and less passive (e.g., withdrawal; Peets et al., 2007) in nature. In contrast, willingness to take partial responsibility for the hurtful incident (i.e., self-blame) could reflect a heightened motivation to make things better between the perpetrator and victim.

Whereas attributions can be made quickly without much reflective thought, rumination entails rethinking and reliving the painful event over and over again (e.g., Rusting & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998). Ruminating about a hurtful incident is likely to trigger and prolong negative feelings (see also Miller et al., 2003). For instance, rumination about one’s own depressed mood increases the likelihood of prolonged depression in adults (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991) and is associated with internalizing problems in children and adolescents (Rose, 2002). Similarly, ruminating about one’s own anger is associated with a higher probability of prolonged feelings of anger (Rusting & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998). In addition, individuals (at least adults) who are more inclined to relive their interpersonal offenses have higher avoidance and revenge motivation (McCullough, Bono, et al., 2007, McCullough et al., 1998) and are more likely to engage in (triggered) displaced aggression (Bushman et al., 2005, Denson et al., 2006).

One mechanism through which cognitive factors, such as attributions of hostility and rumination, operate when triggering revenge and/or avoidance motivation is via (re)activating negative feelings toward the transgressor. Indeed, McCullough, Bono, and colleagues (2007) found that the effect of temporary increases in rumination on temporary increases in avoidance and revenge motivation was mediated through feelings of anger. So far, however, this model has been applied only to positive interpersonal contexts (e.g., romantic relationships, friendships). Whether the same process characterizes other relationships (e.g., marked by animosity) has yet to be tested.

There is accumulating evidence showing that aggressive behavior is highly relationship specific, more commonly occurring in dyads characterized by unilateral or mutual dislike than in positive relationships such as friendships (Card and Hodges, 2007, Peets et al., 2008). However, this does not mean that positively laden relationships are conflict free (e.g., Hartup et al., 1993, Hartup et al., 1988) or that aggressive (or bullying) behavior is never evidenced within friendships (Grotpeter and Crick, 1996, Mishna et al., 2008).

In fact, forgiveness has been mostly studied in the context of close adult relationships such as romantic relationships and friendships (e.g., McCullough, Bono, et al., 2007, McCullough et al., 1998, Stillwell et al., 2008). However, promoting interpersonal forgiveness could be particularly beneficial when the victims feel animosity toward the harm-doer and when getting back at the offender might be a dominant motivating force. Recent evidence does suggest that victimization and aggression are more common among children who dislike each other (e.g., Card and Hodges, 2007, Peets et al., 2008), suggesting that at least some children’s interactions are characterized by mutual negative exchanges with their disliked peer. In addition to revenge, the context of animosity is likely to foster avoidance motivation. For instance, college students report that avoidance is one of the most common ways of dealing with a disliked peer (Card, 2007).

Potential differences in forgiveness across interpersonal contexts are likely to occur due to differential emotiocognitive processes. There is accumulating evidence showing that children’s and adolescents’ information processing depends on the affective nature of the relationship (Burgess et al., 2006, Hymel, 1986, Peets et al., 2007, Peets et al., 2008, Salmivalli and Peets, 2009). Thus, although there is evidence that victims of interpersonal transgressions are more likely to blame the transgressor than to take the responsibility for the offense (see Leary, Springer, Negel, Ansell, & Evans, 1998), relationship context is likely to moderate such attributions. For instance, children and adolescents are inclined to give the “benefit of the doubt” to a friend or someone they like, whereas negative actions by a disliked other are first of all seen as hostile and intentional (Hymel, 1986, Peets et al., 2007, Peets et al., 2008). In addition, children are more likely to take partial responsibility for a conflict when it involves a friend, whereas they are more likely to blame the peer when the conflict involves a nonfriend (Whitesell & Harter, 1996). In a similar vein, because friends are more motivated to solve their conflicts and conflict resolution should reduce rumination, friendships could serve as interpersonal contexts where rumination is less likely to occur.

In addition, although being hurt by someone elicits a variety of negative emotions such as fear, sadness, and embarrassment (e.g., Leary et al., 1998), anger seems to be one of the most frequently felt emotions, at least in response to victimization (Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2004). The interpersonal context of the offense, however, is likely to moderate the quality and intensity of felt emotions. On the one hand, a hurtful act from a friend may violate the core expectations children and adolescents have in their friendship (e.g., friends do not hurt each other; Whitesell & Harter, 1996). Indeed, there is evidence that a hypothetical negative act by a friend triggers more negative feelings (e.g., anger, sadness, hurt) than the same act by a classmate (Whitesell & Harter, 1996). On the other hand, friendships might buffer against intense negative feelings because friends might share a sense of security that a negative act by the other partner is unintentional. For instance, children are more likely to feel “okay” when the provocation comes from a friend rather than a hypothetical peer (Burgess et al., 2006).

This study was designed to extend earlier studies by Peets et al., 2007, Peets et al., 2008 in which the impact of relational context on children’s sociocognitive evaluations was evaluated by means of hypothetical provocation scenarios. One potential limitation of using hypothetical vignettes is that sociocognitive evaluations are made about hypothetical scenarios instead of actual ones, and thus one could argue that this method might be low on ecological validity (although several findings that have demonstrated a link, for instance, between aggression-supporting cognitions and aggression/externalizing problem behaviors somewhat alleviate this criticism). To overcome this limitation, we collected adolescents’ reports of actual recent hurtful incidents believed to be caused by their liked or disliked peer. To encompass an array of different interpersonal transgressions, we focused on perceived hurt rather than on incidents of being victims of aggression bullying. This method also ensured that the transgressions caused by different offenders were actually considered to be hurtful by all of the victims. We anticipated that the hurt caused by the disliked transgressor, as compared with the liked transgressor, would lead to more negative cognitive, affective, and motivational outcomes. Namely, victims of a disliked offender, as compared with a liked offender, would be more likely to attribute hostility to the offender (and take less responsibility for the offenses), ruminate about the offenses, feel negative emotions (especially anger), and be less likely to have forgiven the perpetrator (as reflected by higher levels of avoidance and revenge motivation). Second, in addition to mean-level differences between the two contexts, we expected individual differences in emotiocognitive factors operating within a particular relational context to determine the degree to which individuals would be motivated to avoid or get back at the relationship partner (cf. Peets, Hodges, & Salmivalli, 2011). On the basis of previous research (McCullough, Bono, et al., 2007), we anticipated that rumination and attributions of hostility would trigger feelings of anger that in turn would be associated with increased likelihood of avoidance and revenge motivation toward the offender (see Fig. 1). Although sadness rather than anger could be hypothesized to elicit a flight tendency (avoidance), recent research suggests that both avoidance and revenge might be triggered via feelings of anger toward the transgressor (McCullough, Bono, et al., 2007). So far, a similar mediational model (rumination → anger → avoidance/revenge) has been tested only with adults and in positive affective relationships. We sought to test whether our expanded process model (which also includes attributions of hostile intent) would apply to transgressions in both positive and negative relationships in the school context.