differenceblog: Forgiveness

The Difference Blog by Dan4th (

differenceblog) wrote,
@ 2008-03-04 09:50:00

Entry tags:

empathizing, empathy, forgiveness, guilt, guilty, psychology, revenge, roy baumeister, self-esteem

Forgiveness
Julia Juola Exline, Associate professor of Psychology at Case Western Reserve University, says she was "aggravated" by the results of her experiments with forgiveness. Men kept turning up as less forgiving and more vengeful than women. "The gender difference is not anything that we predicted... We kept trying to explain it away, but it kept repeating in the experiments", said Exline (EurekAlert, 2008). In an article released March 1st, Exline et al (2008) cover seven of these experiments from 1998-2005. The main conclusion is that people are more forgiving if they see themselves as capable of the offense; and that encouraging empathy was more effective in creating forgiveness in men than in women.

You may remember Exline's co-author, Roy Baumeister, from his "Gender Warriors please go home" speech last summer (2007).

In previous work, Exline reported that narcissistic, "entitled" people had a harder time forgiving (EurekAlert, 2005). Now, everyone watch while Dan4th scuttles off to cull previous D-Blogs about "narcissism" and completely fails to find any... Right. Change tactics.

So, see if you can follow me here. This is logically swiss cheese, but I'm enjoying the thought experiment: People who feel more entitled are less likely to forgive. People who can imagine themselves committing the offense are more likely to forgive. So, people who feel more entitled are less able to picture themselves committing an offense? That seems odd to me. I mean, I have an enormous ego, and I've always sort of assumed I'd make a fantastic criminal if I decided to pursue a life of supervillainy. Doesn't everyone?

(Post a new comment)

	ukelele 2008-03-04 03:41 pm UTC (link)
	I wonder if maybe people who feel more entitled don't see it as being an offense? Like maybe they can picture themselves doing these things, but they're not wrong when it's them doing it. They're somehow justified. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	differenceblog 2008-03-04 03:59 pm UTC (link)
	ooh, that's interesting. I forget - do you read Terry Pratchett? I'm reminded of Sam Vimes: it's different cause it's me doing it. You know, it makes a lot more sense to me now. Thanks! Edited at 2008-03-04 04:00 pm UTC (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ukelele 2008-03-04 04:29 pm UTC (link)
	I have read Pratchett, but only a little. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	furikku 2008-03-04 04:14 pm UTC (link)
	I was going to post this. I'm having a frustrating fallout with some people IRL because of that very attitude. The idea seems to be that they can only understand an offense when it's something that upsets THEM, while they can't understand that there's a problem when behavior that is convenient to them is upsetting to someone else. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

furikku
2008-03-04 04:17 pm UTC (link)

Forgot to add- I haven't seen this behavior on strictly gender lines myself. It might have something to do with the offense(s) in question.

I expect it's probably more related to how guys and gals are brought up in US culture than anything inherent, particularly with the whole empathy factor- we all know how differently the genders get trained to deal with feelings and all that mushy stuff, right? -_^

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

differenceblog
2008-03-04 04:25 pm UTC (link)

nods. Yeah, I should have made that clearer in the post, but I felt like it was running long already: one thing that really bothered me is that the Case Western Reserve University press release started with some line about "forgiveness comes more naturally to women." and then they go into all this cultural programming stuff about women being brought up to be more empathic. I feel like "comes naturally" implies that it's biological, not cultural.

Maybe I'm overly touchy about that?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	furikku 2008-03-04 04:27 pm UTC (link)
	It sounds like just automatic use of a cliche without thinking about the different connotations. Unfortunately, I don't think many scientists are also English majors. :/ It does kind of imply a biological difference rather than a cultural one, though. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	dilletante 2008-03-04 03:44 pm UTC (link)
	sure. :) but how likely do you see it that you'd choose to pursue a life of supervillainy? does your enormous ego make you think you'd have an easy time resisting the temptation to villainy? ("c'est moi, c'est moi, i blush to disclose...") then maybe you'll be harder on those who didn't resist the temptation. that's how i read it, anyhow. (Reply to this)(Thread)

differenceblog
2008-03-04 03:58 pm UTC (link)

The funny thing is that my enormous ego actually makes me say things like:

"oh, well, it's harder for other people to resist temptation - I can't possibly expect them to live up to my Amazing Cosmic Powers. So it's okay when they fail. If I fail, well, it's entirely possible that the world will come crashing down around everyone's ears."

oh wait, that's not narcissist, that's perfectionist. D'oh.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

pants_of_doom
2008-03-04 03:47 pm UTC (link)

This makes perfect sense to me and I've seen it in action repeatedly. People who see themselves as more entitled see themselves as more entitled to forgiveness, and more entitled to rely on mitigating circumstances to excuse their offense in the first place - the whole "oh, it's different for me" thing. People who feel less entitled tend to think, "well, I screw up too, and I did these things that aggravated this happening..." and so are more forgiving.

Edit: and yeah, I have seen it correlate strongly to gender.

Edited at 2008-03-04 03:47 pm UTC

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	differenceblog 2008-03-04 04:01 pm UTC (link)
	People who see themselves as more entitled see themselves as more entitled to forgiveness, and more entitled to rely on mitigating circumstances to excuse their offense in the first place This is a really good point, and I hadn't thought of the whole "it's different because it's me" aspect of narcissism, which is really key to the pathology. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	rdi 2008-03-04 04:46 pm UTC (link)
	I was going to point the "different when I do it" effect but I've been beaten to it, so instead I'll point out that ego size isn't necessarily related to sense of entitlement, particularly when you're aware that you have a big ego in the first place. (Speaking as one whose ego is parking orbit somewhere beyond the Kuiper Belt.) (Reply to this)

	tigerbalmv 2008-03-04 11:45 pm UTC (link)
	I'm female, have Asperger's Syndrome, and never forgive anyone. Just a thought here. (Reply to this)

	mimivogue 2008-03-30 10:45 pm UTC (link)
	"Mutual forgiveness of each vice. Such are the Gates of Paradise." William Blake (1757 - 1827) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	differenceblog 2008-03-31 01:59 pm UTC (link)
	interesting quote. Btw, differenceblog has moved. it's now available at diffblog on LJ, or at http://www.differenceblog.com/ (Reply to this)(Parent)

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