Citation

Asian J. Soc. Psychol. 2016; 20(1): 3-10.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/ajsp.12148

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The present research seeks to answer the question of what determines an uninvolved third party's forgiveness attitudes toward conflicting groups' violent partisan members. Specifically, Bangladeshi participants read a fictitious interview with a radicalized Palestinian who declared his intention to avenge himself against Israelis for his personal and collective plight by carrying out a suicide bombing attack.

FINDINGS reveal that an empathy manipulation (high empathy?=?other focused or low empathy?=?objective focused) influenced participants' forgiveness attitudes towards the radicalized Palestinian such that in the high empathy condition participants were more forgiving of the target than participants in the low empathy condition. Moreover, while the strength of their religious identification (Islam) played no significant role, participants' tendency to attribute the target's decision to situational factors fully mediated the effects of empathy on forgiveness.

Language: en

Keywords

empathy; forgiveness; partisan group member; situational attributions; third party