Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: This experiment manipulated the expression of forgiveness after an offense in order to investigate participants' responses to being forgiven. After informing participants that they "lost" a critical document, the experimenter forgave, did not forgive, or did not communicate an offense to the participants. This manipulation did not directly affect participants' willingness to help the experimenter. It did, however, significantly interact with participants' agreeableness when self-esteem and tendency to forgive were covaried, such that high-agreeable people helped most in the no-offense condition and less when unforgiven. Low-agreeable participants demonstrated the opposite trend, with more helping in the unforgiven condition than no-offense. Unforgiveness resulted in more feelings of anger and resentment toward the experimenter and poorer overall evaluations of the experimenter
Author: Amanda Snook
Institution: Trinity University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2338398720