The Influence Of Intimacy And Expectation Of Forgiveness On Interpersonal Forgiveness Of College Students

Interpersonal forgiveness plays an important role in alleviating interpersonal conflicts and building harmonious interpersonal relationships.However,national surveys have found that college students scored very low on forgiveness,making it especially urgent to find intervention targets which can improve the level of college students' forgiveness.From the perspective of both offending parties,the influence of relationship closeness on forgiveness has always been concerned.Compared with stranger offenders,people are more likely to forgive those who are close.This conclusion is largely based on the fact that the offenders didn't do any positive afterward.Previous studies have found that when the offender clearly expressed the desire for forgiveness,the level of interpersonal forgiveness of the victim will be significantly improved.Then,when the offenders of different relationship closeness express the desire for forgiveness,whether the victim can promote the level of interpersonal forgiveness to the stranger offender to the same level as the close offender.In other words,whether the influence of relationship closeness on interpersonal forgiveness can be extended to the situation where the offender clearly expresses the desire for forgiveness.The purpose of this study was to investigate the interaction between relationship closeness and the desire for forgiveness on interpersonal forgiveness of college students.There are two studies in this paper:In the first study,we used the modified Taylor Aggression Paradigm from the perspective of behavioral level to investigate the influence of closeness and the desire for forgiveness on the external performance and the internal intention of forgiveness behavior of college students.In the second study,in order to further prove the results of the internal intention of forgiveness behavior in the first study,we used the modified Taylor Aggression Paradigm and Vocabulary Discrimination Task from the perspective of electrophysiological level,combined with the Event-related Potentials Technology,to investigate the influence of closeness and the desire for forgiveness on the electrophysiological responses of interpersonal forgiveness information processing of college students.The results showed that:(1)In terms of the external performance of forgiveness behavior,whether the offender expressed or did not express the desire for forgiveness,college students always had more external performance of forgiveness behavior to the close offenders than to the strange ones.(2)In terms of the internal intention of forgiveness behavior,the desire for forgiveness moderated the relationship between closeness and internal intention of forgiveness behavior.Specifically,in the context of not expressing the desire for forgiveness,college students are more forgiving to the close offenders than to the strange ones.In the context of expressing the desire for forgiveness,the internal intention of forgiveness behavior of college students tostrangers is promoted to the same level as that of close offenders.(3)The desire for forgiveness moderated the relationship between closeness and the N2 amplitudes during processing the the offender's information.Specifically,in the context of not expressing the desire for forgiveness,when processing the information of strangers induced a larger amplitude of N2 than that of the close offenders;while there was no significant difference in the context of expressing the desire for forgiveness.(4)The desire for forgiveness moderated the relationship between closeness and the P2 amplitudes during processing the offender's pictures and considering the intensity of punishment.Specifically,in the context of not expressing the desire for forgiveness,the pictures of stranger induced a larger amplitude of P2 than that of the close offenders;while there was no significant difference in the context of expressing the desire for forgiveness.In conclusion,this study suggested that the desire for forgiveness moderated the relationship between relationship closeness and interpersonal forgiveness from the perspective of internal intention and electrophysiological response.The findings provide theoretical basis and empirical support for forgiveness education of college students.