The Effect Of The Degree Of Apology And The Intention To Offend On The Victim's Forgiveness

Forgiveness means less vindictiveness,less avoidance,and more motivation to distribute benefits rather than to retaliate against harm.It improves positive cognitive and emotional evaluations of life and benefits multiple areas of life.How to promote forgiveness has always been a hot topic for psychologists.Previous studies have pointed out that forgiveness is mainly influenced by two factors: individual and situation.Based on this,this paper takes forgiveness as the dependent variable to explore the effect of the degree of apology and the intention to offend on the victim's forgiveness.This study examined the effect of the degree of apology and the intention to offend on forgiveness through two experiments.Experiment 1 adopted the internal design of 2(offense intention: intended offense,unintentional offense)×3(apology degree: no apology,no-cost apology,costly apology).123 subjects were selected to explore the influence of apology degree and offense intention on forgiveness through adapted situational materials.The results showed that the degree of apology affected the level of forgiveness,and the higher the cost of the offender's apology,the easier it was to obtain the victim's forgiveness.The victim's perception of the intention to offend affects the response to forgiveness.There was a significant interaction between gender and the degree of apology.In the absence of apology,the forgiveness level of male students was significantly higher than that of female students,while in the absence of costless apology and costless apology,there was no significant difference in the forgiveness level between male and female students.Experiment 2 adopted a hybrid design of 2(offense intention: intended offense,unintentional offense)×3(apology degree: no apology,no-cost apology,costly apology).103 subjects were selected and the prisoner's dilemma paradigm task was used to repeat the test in real interactive situations.The results showed that the degree of apology had a significant interaction with the intention of offense.In the case of no apology and no costapology,the forgiveness level of unintentional offense was significantly higher than that of intentional offense,while in the case of apology,there was no significant difference between the forgiveness response of intentional offense and unintentional offense.There was a significant interaction between gender and intention to offend.In the case of intentional offense,the forgiveness level of male students was significantly higher than that of female students,while in the case of unintentional offense,there was no significant difference between male and female students.Therefore,this study suggests that there is an interaction between the degree of apology and the effect of offending intention on forgiveness.Compared with unintentional offense,intentional offense requires a higher cost of apology to obtain forgiveness from the victim.