Session 10: Victims, Perpetrators and Bystanders

2nd Global Conference

Friday 13th March – Monday 16th March 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

How Victims and Offenders Use Forgiveness and Apology: Relation of Self and Other Responses
Yoona Lee
Psychology department, Brandeis University, MA, USA

In response to offenses, people may: 1) forgive others overtly and directly after receiving apologies from offenders; 2) apologize to victims overtly and directly,  saying “sorry”; 3) forgive offenders or apologize to victims covertly, within themselves, but not by anything they say; 4) make efforts to induce victims to forgive them by overtly but indirectly displaying positive behaviors like smiles or appropriate emotions like regret, or 5) try to induce offenders to feel sorry by overtly but indirectly expressing emotions like anger, sadness, or disappointment. Moreover, people may: 1) covertly feel sorry about their own wrongdoing but release their negative feelings relatively quickly (covert self-apology and self-forgiveness); 2) hold onto those feelings a long time (covert self-apology only); or 3) just let their feelings go without feeling sorry (covert self-forgiveness only). We developed the Personal Responses to Doing Harm Survey (PRDHS) to explore predictors and correlates of these forms of apology and forgiveness.

For this preliminary study, 36 U.S. college student participants(18 females and 17 males) completed a survey packet that included the PRDHS, three other measures of apology and/or forgiveness (i.e., the Enright Forgiveness Inventory, Forgiving Personality Scale, and Ashy Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation Scale), and other validating measures.

Analyses of PRDHS scores revealed that between self and others, people who quickly forgive themselves for wrongdoing without holding negative feelings tended  to forgive offenders by overtly but indirectly inducing offenders to feel sorry about their hurtful behavior (r=.35, p<.05). People who feel sorry about their wrongdoing but do not forgive themselves tended not to induce victims they’ve hurt to forgive them (r=.-34, p<.05). Within self, people who overtly but indirectly induce offenders to apologize tended to overtly but indirectly induce victims to forgive them (r= .44, p<.01).

In support of the validity of the PRDHS, we found support for several hypotheses predicting statistically significant associations between PRDHS scores and other measures of apology and forgiveness. Also: Covert other-apology and forgiveness, and overt but indirect apology and forgiveness were all associated with negative aspects of functioning, such as fearful attachment style, parental child abuse, alexithymia, empathic deficits, limbic system malfunctions, and psychological symptoms. Covert other-apology and forgiveness were positively correlated with parental aggression during childhood (r= .49, p<.05; r=. 56, p<.01); and overt but indirect apology and forgiveness were positively associated with alexithymia (r= .38, p<.05; r= .39, p<.05), while overt and direct apology and forgiveness were related to resiliency (r= .36, p<.05; r= .50, p<.01).

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According to standard philosophical analyses, only victims can forgive. There are good reasons to reject this view. After all, people who are neither direct nor indirect victims of a wrong frequently feel moral anger over injustice. The choice to foreswear or overcome such moral anger is subject to most of the same sorts of considerations as victims’ choices to forgive. Furthermore, bystanders’ reactions to their experiences of moral anger often reflect either virtues or vices that are of a piece with what we normally describe as a forgiving or unforgiving disposition. In this paper, I reject the view that only victims can forgive by examining the virtues and vices that are relevant to the experience of moral anger and presenting the similarities between virtuous victims and virtuous bystanders.

A virtuous person will feel a proportional degree of resentment when she is a victim of wrongdoing. Not to feel such moral anger would signify a failure of self-respect. However, the virtuous victim will also be attuned to the moral considerations that, in most cases, call for the timely resolution of such resentment. Similarly, the virtuous person will be disposed to feel moral anger over the mistreatment of other people. Not to feel anger, in certain circumstances, would fail to respect the victim. Yet the virtuous person will also recognize the moral considerations that support overcoming indignation. In both cases, forgiveness names a virtue that lies between the vices of moral laxity or disrespect for human value, on one extreme, and self-righteousness or hard-heartedness, on the other.

The virtues of victims and bystanders with regard to moral anger are so similar that there is no good reason to apply different labels. However, the recognition of forgiveness in bystanders offers us more than simple consistency. It also leads us to think about the role moral bystanders play in the maintenance of the moral community, as well as the ways in which this role can be abused or overstepped.

Through their indignation, bystanders express commitment to moral norms and solidarity with the victim. Their moral anger helps vindicate the victim’s sense that he deserves better. In being disposed to forgive for morally relevant reasons, bystanders model compassion for wrongdoers and help construct a moral community that offers the possibility of redemption. Yet, while forgiveness is a virtue, so is minding one’s own business. We must ask when moral indignation is appropriately felt and communicated and when bystanders should stay neutral with respect to moral conflicts. We must also attend to the ways in which bystanders’ decisions to forgive might unfairly pressure victims into a forgiveness for which they are not ready. The virtuous bystander must find the mean between the vices of moral laxity and self-righteousness in her relations with both the wrongdoer and the victim. In this way, our expanded account of the virtue of forgiveness poses special challenges for the bystander.

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I would like to present a paper about prisoners and the subject of forgiveness. People who committed crimes are being held in detention. The State then tries to establish, in a judicial procedure, their legal guilt. They are being held responsible for the things they did wrong. But they are also morally guilty, in which field notions about forgiveness belong. How do they feel about forgiveness, responsibility and guilt?

I will be presenting an explorative research which consists of two parts; starting with a theoretical review about the specific relation between forgiveness and detention and I will be ending with a reflection on a series of meetings about forgiveness I held with prisoners. I will also give a presentation of the provisional empirical results from the last meeting in which I asked inmates to fill in a questionnaire about the subject of forgiveness.

The paper will be concentrating on how prisoners have worked with the subject of forgiveness in a series of five meetings I held with them.

In my work as a prison pastor I am asking how prisoners feel and think about the subject of forgiveness. The group work I do with them gives an inside look in their believes and interests in the subject. The definition of forgiveness, the feelings connected to forgiveness and their own need for forgiveness or their need to forgive others are the main subjects in the group meetings. Especially the meaning of ‘self forgiveness’ seems to be important to the participants. The participants are different in many ways, considering age, crime, relationships and detention time.

I start the first meeting with asking them what they think of the word forgiveness. It’s important that they feel free to tell about their personal believes; the meetings are confidential and the participants tell personal things about themselves to each other.

The aim of the second meeting is to find out what kind of feelings the participants associate with forgiveness. I read a story to them about victims of crime and one about a criminal like them. For some of them it’s the first time they ever hear about the effects crime has on people. The third meeting shows a part of the movie “The Mission”, which is about a man who kills his brother in a duel. He finds forgiveness walking up a difficult road alongside a waterfall. We discuss if he receives forgiveness and from whom. The participants compare their punishment to the way he has to go.

During the fourth meeting we talk about the movie and how they would have responded had they been in this situation. Can you forgive other people?

In the last meeting they fill in a questionnaire about forgiveness.

The result of this process is that prisoners start thinking about their responsibility, their guilt and about the possibilities and boundaries of forgiveness in their personal situation. After this series of meetings many feel the urge to continue the conversation we started.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)