Cehajic, Brown, & Castano (2008). Forgive and forget? Antecedents and consequences of intergroup forgiveness in Bosnia and Herzegovina. - Article summary

Forgiveness refers to the prosocial orientation whose aim is the restoration of a relationship with someone who has committed some offence to the victim. Forgiveness is associated with approach-tendencies and the motivation to pursue relationship-constructive actions is mediated by empathy for the offender. A victim’s decision to forgive is associated with the release of feelings of anger and revenge towards the offender.

Intergroup forgiveness refers to a reduction of feelings of revenge, anger and mistrust towards the perpetrator group and intentions to understand, approach and engage with its members.

The contact hypothesis states that intergroup contact is a key variable in improving intergroup relations. A willingness to forgive a perpetrator requires a belief that the perpetrator will not exploit such a move as a sign of weakness. Forgiveness thus requires trust. Trust facilitates forgiveness and contact increases trust. Empathy improves outgroup attitudes. Empathy mediates the effects of contact on intergroup forgiveness.

Contact with the outgroup may facilitate forgiveness of the group through subgrouping or reducing the outgroup homogeneity effect. Frequent and high-quality intergroup contact might facilitate intergroup forgiveness by enhancing trust of the outgroup (1), the amount of perspective taking (i.e. a form of empathy) (2) and the perception of outgroup heterogeneity (3).

Social identity theory (SIT) states that there is a direct link between people’s identification with the ingroup and the tendency to positively differentiate the ingroup from outgroups in terms of judgements, attitudes and behaviour. The common ingroup identity model states that if intergroup encounters can be engineered to foster a more inclusive categorisation of the situation such that the ingroup and outgroup become subsumed into a single enlarged ingroup (e.g. humans vs. ethnic group), intergroup relations would benefit. This leads to the notion that former outgroup members are now seen as ingroup.

In order to facilitate forgiveness, people do not have to give up their sub-group identification but need to identify more strongly with the superordinate group.

Positive intergroup contact and high common-ingroup identification led to greater forgiveness. This was associated with lessened social distance from the outgroup. Intergroup contact impacted on forgiveness through empathy for and trust in the outgroup and the perception of outgroup variability.

An unwillingness to forgive the outgroup might be due to a resistance to forget the past as forgiving is often associated with forgetting.