Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

To connect is to be influenced: What determines a third-party's forgiveness attitudes to conflicting groups' violent partisan members?

Noor

To connect is to be influenced: What determines a third-party's forgiveness attitudes to conflicting groups' violent partisan members? Thumbnail


Authors



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.

Acceptance Date Jun 12, 2016
Publication Date Feb 15, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Asian Journal of Social Psychology
Print ISSN 1367-2223
Publisher Wiley
Pages 3 - 10
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12148
Keywords third party, empathy, forgiveness, situational attributions, partisan group member
Publisher URL http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajsp.12148/abstract