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When just-world beliefs promote and when they inhibit forgiveness
Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 163–168
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When just-world beliefs promote and when they inhibit forgiveness Peter Strelan a,⇑, Robbie M. Sutton b a b
University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide 5005, Australia University of Kent, Canterbury CT27NZ, UK
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 24 June 2010 Received in revised form 10 September 2010 Accepted 15 September 2010
Keywords: BJW Forgiveness Severity Closeness Justice sensitivity
a b s t r a c t The present study provides further evidence that justice and forgiveness are not necessarily competitive responses. Among 157 undergraduates instructed to recall either serious or benign transgressions, justworld beliefs for the self (BJW-self) was associated with forgiveness as inhibition of negative responding but not forgiveness as positive responding. Each of these relations was significantly moderated by transgression severity: the more benign the transgression, the stronger the relationship. Just-world beliefs for others (BJW-others) was negatively associated with inhibition of negative responding and unrelated to positive responding. These relations held over and above well-established predictors of transgression-specific forgiveness (relationship closeness and post-transgression offender effort), and an individual difference variable, justice sensitivity. In practical terms, BJW-self may enable people to better deal with minor stressors. An important theoretical implication is that modelling the relationship between just-world beliefs and forgiveness requires a bidimensional conception of both constructs. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Justice and forgiveness are often conceptualized as competitive responses to a transgression. Certainly, retributive justice and forgiveness are incompatible (Strelan, Feather, & McKee, 2008). However, forgiveness and justice more generally are not necessarily opposed. For example, experimental studies indicate that social justice cognitions (Karremans & Van Lange, 2005) and restorative justice (Strelan et al., 2008) predict forgiveness. In this article we address relations between justice and forgiveness using the belief in a just world (BJW) framework. There is one previous study indicating that BJW and forgiveness are positively related (Strelan, 2007). However, that study was concerned only with dispositional forgiveness. In this paper we examine the extent to which BJW interacts with transgression-specific information, and how such an interaction may be differentially associated with different dimensions of transgression-specific forgiveness. Moreover, we will argue that although just-world beliefs in one particular sphere may be antagonistic to forgiveness, those in another sphere may encourage forgiveness, depending on how forgiveness is operationalized. 1.1. BJW and two dimensions of forgiveness Just-world beliefs are theorized to develop in childhood (Lerner, 1980). As children learn to temper the pursuit of self-gratification ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 883035662; fax: +61 883033770. E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Strelan). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.019
by respecting social and moral norms, they form a tacit ‘‘personal contract” with the world. The terms of this contract are that in return for doing the right thing, individuals can expect to have the right thing done by them. Consequently individuals––certainly those with commensurate formative experiences––assimilate the general rule that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get; good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. As such, BJW provides people with a conceptual framework for negotiating and making sense of their world, enabling them to proceed through life confident in the expectation that events and outcomes are fair and predictable (Hafer, 2000; Sutton & Winnard, 2007). People seek to behave in ways that are consistent with their beliefs about justice (Hafer, 2000). Forgiveness may be consistent or inconsistent with a person’s justice beliefs, depending on the type of justice belief and how forgiveness is conceptualized. In particular, research on just-world beliefs shows that individuals compartmentalize the world, distinguishing between justworld beliefs for the self (BJW-self) and others (BJW-others) (Lipkus, Dalbert, & Siegler, 1996). BJW-self is associated with subjective well-being, adaptive coping with stressors and injustices, and pro-social motivation. BJW-others generally is not, instead being associated with a harsh and punitive social orientation (see Sutton & Winnard, 2007). We address theory underlying these two different conceptualizations in more depth shortly. For its part, forgiveness is typically conceptualized as consisting of two dimensions (see Fincham, 2000; McCullough, Fincham, & Tsang, 2003). The first is where victims restrain themselves from such negative responses as grudge-holding, avoidance, and revenge. The second
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dimension reflects the classic perspective of forgiveness as an altruistic, offender-oriented response where forgiveness is defined variously as an act of love, compassion, and benevolence (e.g., Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000). Theoretically and empirically, the two dimensions are often treated independently (e.g., McCullough et al., 2003). Importantly, just-world beliefs require adherence to moral duties and respect for moral proscriptions, more than they motivate discretionary acts of altruism which are perceived to go above and beyond normal social expectations (Bierhoff, 2002; Dalbert, 1999). These principles apply regardless of the sphere of justice (i.e., BJW-self or others). Thus, H1. BJW is related to forgiveness defined as restraint from negative responding but not forgiveness as positive responding. 1.2. BJW-self and forgiveness BJW-self enables adaptive responses to transgressions. Experimental evidence suggests BJW-self motivates people to seek out some indication of fairness in a situation (Hagedoorn, Buunk, & Van de Vliert, 2002). As a result, BJW-self seems to encourage cognitive reframing (Dalbert, 2002), thereby acting as a coping mechanism that buffers victims from adverse psychological consequences of negative outcomes (e.g., Dalbert, 2002; Sutton & Douglas, 2005). BJW-self also empowers people to invest in the future through constructive rather than destructive actions, confident their investment will one day be rewarded or reciprocated (Dalbert, 2002; Hafer, 2000). Individuals with strong BJW-self may view a negative response to a transgression as a harmful, morally questionable behaviour in its own right and so a potential violation of the personal contract (Dalbert, 1999; Sutton & Winnard, 2007). Further, BJW-self may encourage victims to consider the longer-term investments of restraining negative responding, for example, ridding oneself of negative emotional and cognitive baggage (Worthington & Scherer, 2004) or maintaining a valued relationship (Tsang, McCullough, & Fincham, 2006). For example married partners were more likely to accommodate spouses’ negative behaviors because of the belief their actions would one day be reciprocated (Lipkus & Bissonnette, 1996). H2. BJW-self will be associated with reduced negative responding.
1.3. BJW-others and forgiveness People with strong just-world beliefs about others expect that others are treated fairly by the world; consistent with the terms of others’ personal contract with the world, others are expected, in turn, to act fairly, morally, and in a trustworthy manner (Bègue, 2002). When others violate such expectations, for example by transgressing, beliefs about justice for others (i.e., people get what they deserve; bad things happen to bad people) tend to encourage the expression of harsh social attitudes and punitive responding (for a brief review see Sutton & Winnard, 2007). H3. BJW-others will be associated with increased negative responding. 1.4. Interaction between BJW and transgression severity The effects of BJW may be moderated by event-specific information (Hafer & Bègue, 2005). The present study focused on the extent to which transgression severity interacts with BJW to predict forgiveness. Transgression severity is considered a key pre-
dictor of forgiveness (Fincham, Jackson, & Beach, 2005): the more severe the transgression the less likely one is to forgive. For the hypothesized relationship between severity and BJWself, we begin by noting that people are motivated to protect against attacks on their self-esteem. BJW-self is positively associated with self-esteem (Sutton & Douglas, 2005). A victim with strong BJW-self (and therefore heightened self-esteem) is unlikely to go so far as to forgive a highly serious transgression. Further, victims are unlikely to find an element of fairness in a highly severe transgression (Hagedoorn et al., 2002) and therefore are unlikely to respond in ways consistent with their just-world beliefs about the self, such as forgiving. Moreover, BJW-self encourages investment in the future. A victim with strong BJW-self may not perceive it an investment to forgive more severe transgressions, since to do so would risk communicating vulnerability and weakness and inviting a repeat of the serious offence (Lamb & Murphy, 2002). H4. The relationship between BJW-self and negative responding will weaken as transgression severity increases. BJW-others is associated with negative responding which is motivated to punish wrongdoers (Bègue & Bastounis, 2003) and facilitated by the perception that victims are deserving of their fate (Sutton & Winnard, 2007). Therefore, the more severe the transgression, the more victims may feel entitled and possibly even required to respond negatively to transgressors. H5. The relationship between BJW-others and negative responding will strengthen as transgression severity increases. 1.5. Additional variables We examined whether relations between BJW, severity, and forgiveness would hold over and above two well-established transgression-specific predictors of forgiveness which have been shown to also influence transgression severity perceptions. One predictor is relationship closeness, particularly relevant given people are most likely to feel hurt when the hurt is inflicted by someone to whom they are close (e.g., Tsang et al., 2006). We controlled this factor in light of its potential confound with transgression severity. The other predictor is post-transgression offender effort, encompassing genuine expressions of apology, remorse, amends, and taking responsibility by an offender for a wrongdoing (e.g., McCullough et al., 2003). Such effort reduces perceptions of transgression severity (Fincham et al., 2005). Finally, we controlled for individual differences in sensitivity to personal injustice (Schmitt, Gollwitzer, Maes, & Arbach, 2005). Justice sensitivity is associated with belief in an unjust world, negative dispositions such as neuroticism and vengefulness, and antisocial behaviors such as delinquency and immoral choices (Schmitt et al., 2005). Although it has yet to be studied in relation to forgiveness, people who score high on this variable are less likely to believe the world is just and may be less likely to forgive. 2. Method 2.1. Participants There were originally 172 Australian undergraduates participating for partial course credit, but after screening 157 cases were analysed (15 were discarded after cross-checking of manipulation checks revealed they failed to read manipulation instructions properly: eight in the low severity condition; five in the high severity condition; and two provided no information about their transgres-
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sion). Of these, 125 were female and 32 were male (M age = 19, SD = 2.53). 2.2. Procedure Participants were randomly assigned to read either High or Low transgression severity instructions (Low severity italicized in brackets): ‘‘In this study we are interested in how people respond to being treated unfairly, particularly really hurtful experiences (particularly mildly irritating everyday experiences). For example, things like your partner cheating on you; being [sexually or physically] abused; a good friend or family member really letting you down; etc. (For example, things like someone causing you to slow down or brake in traffic; someone pushing ahead of you in a line; a tutor giving more help to another student than to you; etc). So, the first thing we would like you to do is to think of a really hurtful event in your life (think of a mildly irritating situation) where you were treated unfairly. Try and put yourself back in that situation and think about how it made you feel”. 2.3. Materials After describing the recalled situation, participants completed manipulation checks and measures, described below. Severity instructions manipulation checks consisted of four items: ‘Where would you rate the seriousness of what you experienced? (1 = e.g., someone pushing ahead in a line; 6 = somewhere in between; 11 = e.g., sexual abuse, murder of a family member); ‘Compared to all the other hurtful things that have happened to you in your life, how hurtful was this particular event?’ (1 = least hurtful; 5 = most hurtful); ‘How unfair was this person’s actions?’ (1 = completely fair; 5 = completely unfair); and ‘How distressed did it make you feel?’ (1 = not distressed at all; 5 = extremely distressed). Forgiveness as positive responding was measured using the fiveitem ‘Presence of positive responding’ subscale of Rye et al. (2001) Forgiveness Scale, and the five-item benevolence subscale of McCullough et al. (2003) TRIM scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The two subscales were highly correlated (r = .79). Thus, they were standardized and summed to produce a composite variable, ‘Positive Responding’, with higher scores indicating increased positive responding towards an offender (a = .92). Forgiveness as inhibition of negative responding was measured using the avoidance (7 items) and revenge (5 items) subscales of McCullough et al. (2003) TRIM scale, and the ‘Absence of negative responding’ subscale (Rye et al., 2001) Forgiveness Scale (10 items) (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The Absence of negative responding subscale was moderately correlated with the Avoidance (r = .51) and Revenge (r = .57) subscales. The latter two were also moderately correlated (r = .54). Consequently, the Absence of negative responding scale was reverse-scored and the three subscales were standardized and summed to produce a composite variable, ‘Negative responding’, with higher scores indicating increased negative responding towards an offender (a = .88). BJW-self and BJW-others were measured using Lipkus et al. (1996) scale. Each subscale consists of eight items (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Higher summed and average scores reflected stronger BJW (BJW-self a = .85; BJW-others a = .86). Relationship closeness was measured using the item, ‘How close were you to the person who treated you unfairly?’ (1 = not close at all; 5 = extremely close). Post-transgression offender effort was measured by summing and averaging the scores on three items: ‘The other person was sorry for what they did’; ‘the other person tried to make up for what they did’; and ‘the other person took responsibility for their actions’ (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) (a = .77).
Table 1 Summary of t-tests for differences between high and low severity conditions. Variable
High severity M (SD)
Unfair Distress Comparative hurt Relative serious BJW-self BJW-others Forgive–pos.a Forgive–neg.a Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitive
4.35 4.34 3.72 6.01 4.11 3.11 0.03 0.31 3.97 2.00 4.12
(0.85) (0.90) (0.90) (1.88) (0.86) (0.87) (1.94) (2.53) (1.26) (1.03) (0.85)
Low severity M (SD) 4.29 3.41 2.17 3.19 4.14 3.07 0.06 0.32 2.32 1.76 3.78
(0.77) (0.93) (1.09) (1.92) (0.83) (0.84) (1.84) (2.44) (1.49) (0.87) (0.86)
t
p
0.46 6.36 9.75 9.29 0.35 0.82 0.39 0.77 7.51 1.65 2.49
>1 .001 .001 .001 >1 >1 >1 >1 .001 >1 .01
High severity n = 79. Low severity n = 78. a standardized values.
Justice sensitivity was measured with the 10-item JS-Victim subscale of Schmitt et al. (2005) Justice Sensitivity scale (0 = not at all true; 5 = absolutely true). Higher summed and averaged scores indicate greater sensitivity to personal injustice (a = .86). 3. Results 3.1. Severity instructions manipulation checks Independent samples t-tests were conducted for differences between High and Low severity conditions (Table 1). Given that all participants were asked to think of an unfair event they had personally experienced, there was no difference between conditions on the perceived unfairness of the transgression. Also as expected, participants in the High (versus Low) severity condition were more likely to say the event was distressing, comparatively hurtful, and relatively serious. 3.2. Relations between severity condition, justice, and forgiveness Although BJW was measured after manipulating transgression recall, Table 1 shows there were no differences between High and Low severity conditions on BJW-self and BJW-others. There was no difference between severity conditions on forgiveness as positive or negative responding. However, as we foreshadowed, participants in the High severity condition were more likely than those in the Low severity condition to report being close to the person who had hurt them (Table 1). Consequently, we conducted an ANCOVA with closeness entered as a covariate. A significant difference between conditions emerged, with Low severity participants more likely to respond positively, F(1, 154) = 6.90, p = .01, g2 = .043 and less likely to respond negatively, F(1, 154) = 5.51, p = .02, g2 = .035. 3.3. Relations between BJW, relationship closeness, post-transgression offender effort, justice sensitivity, and forgiveness Correlations between key variables are presented in Table 2. Most notably, neither BJW variable was associated with positive responding, providing initial bivariate support for H1. BJW-self was negatively related to negative responding; closeness was positively associated with positive responding; offender effort was negatively associated with negative responding and positively related to positive responding; and justice sensitivity correlated positively with negative responding and negatively with BJW-self and positive responding.
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Table 2 Pearson product moment correlations between severity, bjw, closeness, offender effort, justice sensitivity, and forgiveness. 1 BJW-self BJW-others Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitivity Positive responding Negative responding
.24** .02 .01 .25** .12 .33**
3
.01 .07 .09 .01 .09
4
.26** .01 .37** .06
5
.02 .43** .24**
6
.22** .32**
N = 157. ** p < .001.
1
Predictor variable Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitivity Severity BJW-self BJW-others BJW-self X severity BJW-others X severity
2
3
B
SEB
t
1
Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitivity
0.00 0.61 0.90
0.12 0.20 0.21
.00 .23 .31
0.02 3.03* 4.23**
.156**
2
Severity BJW-self BJW-others
0.77 0.92 0.48
0.42 0.22 0.22
.15 .31 .16
1.83 4.13** 2.21*
.104**
3
BJW-self X severity BJW-others X severity
1.51 0.43
0.43 0.42
.37 .11
3.50** 1.03
.057**
b
Total R = .316**. Total Adj. R2 = .279**.. * p < .05. N = 157. ** p < .001.
0.32 0.69 0.46 0.68 0.19 0.07 1.15 0.00
0.08 0.14 0.15 0.30 0.16 0.16 0.31 0.30
R2D
t
b .27 .35 .21 .18 .08 .03 .37 .00
**
3.90 4.99** 3.15* 2.23* 1.17 0.45 3.75** 0.01
4
hi bjw lo bjw
.297**
3 .028 .062**
Total R2 = .387**. Total Adj. R2 = .354**. * p < .05. N = 157. ** p < .001.
4
2 1 0 -1 -2 -3
hi bjw lo bjw
3 Positive responding
SEB
2
Table 3 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis with closeness, post-transgression offender effort, justice sensitivity, severity, and bjw predicting positive responding. Step
Predictor variable
.64**
B
R2D
Step
Negative responding
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
2
Table 4 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis with closeness, post-transgression offender effort, justice sensitivity, severity, and bjw predicting negative responding.
-4 low
2
Severity
high
Fig. 2. The interaction of BJW-self and severity on negative responding.
1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 low
Severity
high
Fig. 1. The interaction of BJW-self and severity on positive responding.
We conducted two separate hierarchical regressions to test the extent to which BJW predicted forgiveness as positive or negative responding (H1, H2, H3), taking into account the potential moderating effect of transgression severity (H4, H5). The BJW variables were centered. Closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity were controlled for at step 1. We entered severity and the BJW variables at step 2. We then computed interaction terms for severity X each BJW variable and entered these interaction terms at step 3. Table 3 shows at step 1 closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity accounted for 30% of variance on positive responding,
F(3, 153) = 21.58, p < .001, with all three variables making significant unique contributions. Severity and BJW variables at step 2 did not add significantly to the model, Fchange(3, 150) = 2.04, p > 1. At step 3 the two interaction terms accounted for a further 6% of variance, Fchange(2, 148)=7.50, p = .001, with the severity X BJW-self interaction retaining a unique association, thereby qualifying H1. Simple slopes showed BJW-self was positively associated with positive responding for low severity (b = .36, t(77) = 3.38, p = .001) but not high severity transgressions (b = .11, t(78) = 0.95, p = .344) (Fig. 1). Table 4 shows at step 1 closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity predicted 16% of variance on negative responding, F(3, 153) = 9.42, p < .001, with offender effort and justice sensitivity making significant unique contributions. At step 2, severity and BJW predicted a further 10% of variance, Fchange(3, 150) = 7.00, p < .001. As expected, BJW-self was related to reduced negative responding (H2), whereas BJW-others was related to increased negative responding (H3). At step 3, the two interaction terms accounted for another 6% of variance, Fchange(2, 148) = 6.12, p = .003. As hypothesized (H4), there was a severity X BJW-self interaction. Examination of simple slopes indicated for low severity transgressions BJW-self was negatively associated with negative responding (ß = .56, t(77) = 5.84, p = .001). This relationship was non-significant for severe transgressions (ß = .11, t(78) = 0.99, p = .325) (Fig. 2). In contrast to expectations (H5), there was no interaction between BJW-others and severity.
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4. Discussion A personally-experienced transgression constitutes a threat to one’s just-world beliefs. Our results suggest that forgiveness enables people to deal with the threat in a way that is consistent with their beliefs, although it may depend on how forgiveness is operationalized. The nature of the forgiving response, meanwhile, seems to be related to the sphere of justice being measured. In the parlance of forgiveness, people with strong BJW-self are less likely to hold a grudge, avoid their transgressor, or seek revenge following a transgression. We might speculate that BJW-self encourages people to appreciate the wisdom of withholding a negative response. As much previous research has shown, inhibiting negative responding contributes to restored social harmony and victims’ psychological wellbeing (e.g., Worthington & Scherer, 2004). However, the relation between BJW-self and negative responding is contingent on transgression severity, consistent with our theorizing. On one hand, BJW-self may take a victim only so far when it comes to forgiving a serious transgression. On the other hand, BJW-self may enable people to better deal with life’s minor stressors. Although such events are relatively less hurtful they are also more prevalent in our everyday lives. Being able to let go of daily hassles contributes to healthy functioning and therefore at this level, at least, self-oriented just-world beliefs are important. Justice beliefs are related to quite opposite behaviors when BJW is measured on the basis of how just the world is for others. Controlling for closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity, BJW-others is associated with negative responding. However, contrary to expectations, there was no interaction between BJW-others and severity, suggesting that the experience of a transgression is sufficient to prompt the negative responding associated with BJW-others. Justice beliefs guide how one and others should act according to the personal contract (if one is a victim, one should refrain from negative responding; others who harm should be treated punitively). Neither sphere of BJW is necessarily concerned, therefore, with the wellbeing of another person. Accordingly, we found that justice beliefs are largely irrelevant to forgiveness as positive responding. Yet, unexpectedly, for transgressions of low severity BJW-self was positively associated with positive responding. However, if one responds positively for the sake of social harmony––a primary motivation for forgiveness (Tsang et al., 2006) and one which, crucially, also benefits the victim (even if the relationship is not close)––then the finding is consistent with BJW-self theorizing. Future research may test this new hypothesis. Although not our primary aim, we replicated the well-established relations between relationship closeness and post-transgression offender effort and forgiveness. Similar relations were observed for justice sensitivity, an individual difference variable that until now has not been applied to forgiveness. As expected, the more an individual feels sensitive to being victimized, the less likely they are to forgive. Importantly, just-world beliefs predicted forgiveness over and above these variables. Turning to the limitations of the present study, a key aspect involved varying transgression severity. Ideally we would have used a lab-based transgression. However, for obvious ethical reasons forgiveness-relevant paradigms can only be benign or abstracted (e.g., Santelli, Struthers, & Eaton, 2009). Yet, emotionally-resonant transgressions are necessary to prime both BJW motivations (Hafer & Bègue, 2005) and forgiveness (Worthington & Scherer, 2004). Thus, our design was a variation on the standard approach in forgiveness research, where participants recall a personally-experienced transgression. Although this meant trading off some internal validity, it enabled us to ensure that the injustice experienced was emotionally resonant (because of its personal relevance).
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A consequence of our approach was that, as we expected, participants under high severity instructions tended to recall transgressions by close others, whereas this was less likely for benign transgressions. Although we controlled for relationship closeness, this was a limitation. Nonetheless, it has at the same time provided an insight into the relationship between BJW and transgressionspecific forgiveness. BJW-self is more likely to be associated with forgiveness when a transgression is not very severe—and, based on our design, therefore more likely to have been enacted by someone to whom the victim is not close. Such a conclusion begs the question as to whether BJW-self would operate in the same way if a low severity transgression was performed by a close other. Theoretically, the association between BJW-self and forgiveness should be even stronger. Future research may also consider the process by which BJW relates to forgiveness, testing, for example, cognitive reframing (Dalbert, 2002) as a mediator. Further, our focus on forgiveness as possessing negative and positive dimensions reflects ‘traditional’ theorizing about the nature of forgiveness (e.g., Fincham, 2000; McCullough et al., 2003) but future studies may consider how justice beliefs relate to alternative conceptualizations of forgiveness. For example, recently forgiveness has been conceptualized on the basis of decisional and emotional dimensions (e.g., Worthington, Witvliet, Pietrini, & Miller, 2007). Finally, our findings speak to the broader issue of compatibility between justice and forgiveness. Our study adds to previous research which suggests that forgiveness and justice are not necessarily competitive when justice is concerned with inclusiveness. As we and a number of other researchers have found (e.g., Sutton & Douglas, 2005; Sutton & Winnard, 2007), partitioning justice into spheres relating to the self and others leads to different outcomes: one that is associated with negative responses and one that is associated with the inhibition of such responses. In short, the traditional disjunction between justice and forgiveness holds when we consider just-world beliefs about others. However, believing in justice for the self may be associated with forgiving responses, particularly when the transgression is not too severe. Acknowledgement This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0877945) to the first author. References Bègue, L. (2002). Beliefs in justice and faith in people: Just world, religiosity, and interpersonal trust. Personality and Individual Differences, 32, 375–382. Bègue, L., & Bastounis, M. (2003). Two spheres of belief in justice: Extensive support for the bidimensional model of belief in a just world. Journal of Personality, 71, 435–463. Bierhoff, H. (2002). Just world, social responsibility, and helping behavior. In M. J. Lerner, M. Ross, & D. T. Miller (Eds.), The justice motive in everyday life (pp. 189–203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalbert, C. (1999). The world is more just for me than generally: About the personal belief in a just world scale’s validity. Social Justice Research, 12, 79–98. Dalbert, C. (2002). Beliefs in a just world as a buffer against anger. Social Justice Research, 15, 123–145. Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. (2000). Helping clients forgive: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Fincham, F. D. (2000). The kiss of the porcupines: From attributing responsibility to forgiving. Personal Relationships, 7, 1–23. Fincham, F. D., Jackson, H., & Beach, S. R. H. (2005). Transgression severity and forgiveness: Different moderators of objective and subjective severity. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 860–875. Hafer, C. L. (2000). Do innocent victims threaten the belief in a just world? Evidence BJW and forgiveness from a modified Stroop task. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 165–173. Hafer, C. L., & Bègue, L. (2005). Experimental research on just-world theory: Problems, developments, and future challenges. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 128–167.
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Schmitt, M., Gollwitzer, M., Maes, J., & Arbach, D. (2005). Justice sensitivity: Assessment and location in the personality space. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 21, 202–211. Strelan, P. (2007). The prosocial, adaptive qualities of just world beliefs: Implications for the relationship between justice and forgiveness. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 881–890. Strelan, P., Feather, N. T., & McKee, I. (2008). Justice and forgiveness: Experimental evidence for compatibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1538–1544. Sutton, R. M., & Douglas, K. M. (2005). Justice for all, or just for me? More evidence of the importance of the self-other distinction in just-world beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 637–645. Sutton, R. M., & Winnard, E. J. (2007). Looking ahead through lenses of justice. The relevance of just-world beliefs to intentions and confidence in the future. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46, 649–666. Tsang, J.-A., McCullough, M. E., & Fincham, F. D. (2006). The longitudinal association between forgiveness and relationship closeness and commitment. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 25, 448–472. Worthington, E. L., & Scherer, M. (2004). Forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping strategy that can reduce health risks and promote health resilience. Theory, review, and hypotheses. Psychology and Health, 19, 385–405. Worthington, E. L., Witvliet, C. V. O., Pietrini, P., & Miller, A. J. (2007). Forgiveness, health, and well-being: A review of evidence for emotional versus decisional forgiveness, dispositional forgivingness, and reduced unforgiveness. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 30, 291–302.
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Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
When just-world beliefs promote and when they inhibit forgiveness Peter Strelan a,⇑, Robbie M. Sutton b a b
University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide 5005, Australia University of Kent, Canterbury CT27NZ, UK
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 24 June 2010 Received in revised form 10 September 2010 Accepted 15 September 2010
Keywords: BJW Forgiveness Severity Closeness Justice sensitivity
a b s t r a c t The present study provides further evidence that justice and forgiveness are not necessarily competitive responses. Among 157 undergraduates instructed to recall either serious or benign transgressions, justworld beliefs for the self (BJW-self) was associated with forgiveness as inhibition of negative responding but not forgiveness as positive responding. Each of these relations was significantly moderated by transgression severity: the more benign the transgression, the stronger the relationship. Just-world beliefs for others (BJW-others) was negatively associated with inhibition of negative responding and unrelated to positive responding. These relations held over and above well-established predictors of transgression-specific forgiveness (relationship closeness and post-transgression offender effort), and an individual difference variable, justice sensitivity. In practical terms, BJW-self may enable people to better deal with minor stressors. An important theoretical implication is that modelling the relationship between just-world beliefs and forgiveness requires a bidimensional conception of both constructs. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Justice and forgiveness are often conceptualized as competitive responses to a transgression. Certainly, retributive justice and forgiveness are incompatible (Strelan, Feather, & McKee, 2008). However, forgiveness and justice more generally are not necessarily opposed. For example, experimental studies indicate that social justice cognitions (Karremans & Van Lange, 2005) and restorative justice (Strelan et al., 2008) predict forgiveness. In this article we address relations between justice and forgiveness using the belief in a just world (BJW) framework. There is one previous study indicating that BJW and forgiveness are positively related (Strelan, 2007). However, that study was concerned only with dispositional forgiveness. In this paper we examine the extent to which BJW interacts with transgression-specific information, and how such an interaction may be differentially associated with different dimensions of transgression-specific forgiveness. Moreover, we will argue that although just-world beliefs in one particular sphere may be antagonistic to forgiveness, those in another sphere may encourage forgiveness, depending on how forgiveness is operationalized. 1.1. BJW and two dimensions of forgiveness Just-world beliefs are theorized to develop in childhood (Lerner, 1980). As children learn to temper the pursuit of self-gratification ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 883035662; fax: +61 883033770. E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Strelan). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.019
by respecting social and moral norms, they form a tacit ‘‘personal contract” with the world. The terms of this contract are that in return for doing the right thing, individuals can expect to have the right thing done by them. Consequently individuals––certainly those with commensurate formative experiences––assimilate the general rule that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get; good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. As such, BJW provides people with a conceptual framework for negotiating and making sense of their world, enabling them to proceed through life confident in the expectation that events and outcomes are fair and predictable (Hafer, 2000; Sutton & Winnard, 2007). People seek to behave in ways that are consistent with their beliefs about justice (Hafer, 2000). Forgiveness may be consistent or inconsistent with a person’s justice beliefs, depending on the type of justice belief and how forgiveness is conceptualized. In particular, research on just-world beliefs shows that individuals compartmentalize the world, distinguishing between justworld beliefs for the self (BJW-self) and others (BJW-others) (Lipkus, Dalbert, & Siegler, 1996). BJW-self is associated with subjective well-being, adaptive coping with stressors and injustices, and pro-social motivation. BJW-others generally is not, instead being associated with a harsh and punitive social orientation (see Sutton & Winnard, 2007). We address theory underlying these two different conceptualizations in more depth shortly. For its part, forgiveness is typically conceptualized as consisting of two dimensions (see Fincham, 2000; McCullough, Fincham, & Tsang, 2003). The first is where victims restrain themselves from such negative responses as grudge-holding, avoidance, and revenge. The second
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dimension reflects the classic perspective of forgiveness as an altruistic, offender-oriented response where forgiveness is defined variously as an act of love, compassion, and benevolence (e.g., Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000). Theoretically and empirically, the two dimensions are often treated independently (e.g., McCullough et al., 2003). Importantly, just-world beliefs require adherence to moral duties and respect for moral proscriptions, more than they motivate discretionary acts of altruism which are perceived to go above and beyond normal social expectations (Bierhoff, 2002; Dalbert, 1999). These principles apply regardless of the sphere of justice (i.e., BJW-self or others). Thus, H1. BJW is related to forgiveness defined as restraint from negative responding but not forgiveness as positive responding. 1.2. BJW-self and forgiveness BJW-self enables adaptive responses to transgressions. Experimental evidence suggests BJW-self motivates people to seek out some indication of fairness in a situation (Hagedoorn, Buunk, & Van de Vliert, 2002). As a result, BJW-self seems to encourage cognitive reframing (Dalbert, 2002), thereby acting as a coping mechanism that buffers victims from adverse psychological consequences of negative outcomes (e.g., Dalbert, 2002; Sutton & Douglas, 2005). BJW-self also empowers people to invest in the future through constructive rather than destructive actions, confident their investment will one day be rewarded or reciprocated (Dalbert, 2002; Hafer, 2000). Individuals with strong BJW-self may view a negative response to a transgression as a harmful, morally questionable behaviour in its own right and so a potential violation of the personal contract (Dalbert, 1999; Sutton & Winnard, 2007). Further, BJW-self may encourage victims to consider the longer-term investments of restraining negative responding, for example, ridding oneself of negative emotional and cognitive baggage (Worthington & Scherer, 2004) or maintaining a valued relationship (Tsang, McCullough, & Fincham, 2006). For example married partners were more likely to accommodate spouses’ negative behaviors because of the belief their actions would one day be reciprocated (Lipkus & Bissonnette, 1996). H2. BJW-self will be associated with reduced negative responding.
1.3. BJW-others and forgiveness People with strong just-world beliefs about others expect that others are treated fairly by the world; consistent with the terms of others’ personal contract with the world, others are expected, in turn, to act fairly, morally, and in a trustworthy manner (Bègue, 2002). When others violate such expectations, for example by transgressing, beliefs about justice for others (i.e., people get what they deserve; bad things happen to bad people) tend to encourage the expression of harsh social attitudes and punitive responding (for a brief review see Sutton & Winnard, 2007). H3. BJW-others will be associated with increased negative responding. 1.4. Interaction between BJW and transgression severity The effects of BJW may be moderated by event-specific information (Hafer & Bègue, 2005). The present study focused on the extent to which transgression severity interacts with BJW to predict forgiveness. Transgression severity is considered a key pre-
dictor of forgiveness (Fincham, Jackson, & Beach, 2005): the more severe the transgression the less likely one is to forgive. For the hypothesized relationship between severity and BJWself, we begin by noting that people are motivated to protect against attacks on their self-esteem. BJW-self is positively associated with self-esteem (Sutton & Douglas, 2005). A victim with strong BJW-self (and therefore heightened self-esteem) is unlikely to go so far as to forgive a highly serious transgression. Further, victims are unlikely to find an element of fairness in a highly severe transgression (Hagedoorn et al., 2002) and therefore are unlikely to respond in ways consistent with their just-world beliefs about the self, such as forgiving. Moreover, BJW-self encourages investment in the future. A victim with strong BJW-self may not perceive it an investment to forgive more severe transgressions, since to do so would risk communicating vulnerability and weakness and inviting a repeat of the serious offence (Lamb & Murphy, 2002). H4. The relationship between BJW-self and negative responding will weaken as transgression severity increases. BJW-others is associated with negative responding which is motivated to punish wrongdoers (Bègue & Bastounis, 2003) and facilitated by the perception that victims are deserving of their fate (Sutton & Winnard, 2007). Therefore, the more severe the transgression, the more victims may feel entitled and possibly even required to respond negatively to transgressors. H5. The relationship between BJW-others and negative responding will strengthen as transgression severity increases. 1.5. Additional variables We examined whether relations between BJW, severity, and forgiveness would hold over and above two well-established transgression-specific predictors of forgiveness which have been shown to also influence transgression severity perceptions. One predictor is relationship closeness, particularly relevant given people are most likely to feel hurt when the hurt is inflicted by someone to whom they are close (e.g., Tsang et al., 2006). We controlled this factor in light of its potential confound with transgression severity. The other predictor is post-transgression offender effort, encompassing genuine expressions of apology, remorse, amends, and taking responsibility by an offender for a wrongdoing (e.g., McCullough et al., 2003). Such effort reduces perceptions of transgression severity (Fincham et al., 2005). Finally, we controlled for individual differences in sensitivity to personal injustice (Schmitt, Gollwitzer, Maes, & Arbach, 2005). Justice sensitivity is associated with belief in an unjust world, negative dispositions such as neuroticism and vengefulness, and antisocial behaviors such as delinquency and immoral choices (Schmitt et al., 2005). Although it has yet to be studied in relation to forgiveness, people who score high on this variable are less likely to believe the world is just and may be less likely to forgive. 2. Method 2.1. Participants There were originally 172 Australian undergraduates participating for partial course credit, but after screening 157 cases were analysed (15 were discarded after cross-checking of manipulation checks revealed they failed to read manipulation instructions properly: eight in the low severity condition; five in the high severity condition; and two provided no information about their transgres-
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sion). Of these, 125 were female and 32 were male (M age = 19, SD = 2.53). 2.2. Procedure Participants were randomly assigned to read either High or Low transgression severity instructions (Low severity italicized in brackets): ‘‘In this study we are interested in how people respond to being treated unfairly, particularly really hurtful experiences (particularly mildly irritating everyday experiences). For example, things like your partner cheating on you; being [sexually or physically] abused; a good friend or family member really letting you down; etc. (For example, things like someone causing you to slow down or brake in traffic; someone pushing ahead of you in a line; a tutor giving more help to another student than to you; etc). So, the first thing we would like you to do is to think of a really hurtful event in your life (think of a mildly irritating situation) where you were treated unfairly. Try and put yourself back in that situation and think about how it made you feel”. 2.3. Materials After describing the recalled situation, participants completed manipulation checks and measures, described below. Severity instructions manipulation checks consisted of four items: ‘Where would you rate the seriousness of what you experienced? (1 = e.g., someone pushing ahead in a line; 6 = somewhere in between; 11 = e.g., sexual abuse, murder of a family member); ‘Compared to all the other hurtful things that have happened to you in your life, how hurtful was this particular event?’ (1 = least hurtful; 5 = most hurtful); ‘How unfair was this person’s actions?’ (1 = completely fair; 5 = completely unfair); and ‘How distressed did it make you feel?’ (1 = not distressed at all; 5 = extremely distressed). Forgiveness as positive responding was measured using the fiveitem ‘Presence of positive responding’ subscale of Rye et al. (2001) Forgiveness Scale, and the five-item benevolence subscale of McCullough et al. (2003) TRIM scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The two subscales were highly correlated (r = .79). Thus, they were standardized and summed to produce a composite variable, ‘Positive Responding’, with higher scores indicating increased positive responding towards an offender (a = .92). Forgiveness as inhibition of negative responding was measured using the avoidance (7 items) and revenge (5 items) subscales of McCullough et al. (2003) TRIM scale, and the ‘Absence of negative responding’ subscale (Rye et al., 2001) Forgiveness Scale (10 items) (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The Absence of negative responding subscale was moderately correlated with the Avoidance (r = .51) and Revenge (r = .57) subscales. The latter two were also moderately correlated (r = .54). Consequently, the Absence of negative responding scale was reverse-scored and the three subscales were standardized and summed to produce a composite variable, ‘Negative responding’, with higher scores indicating increased negative responding towards an offender (a = .88). BJW-self and BJW-others were measured using Lipkus et al. (1996) scale. Each subscale consists of eight items (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). Higher summed and average scores reflected stronger BJW (BJW-self a = .85; BJW-others a = .86). Relationship closeness was measured using the item, ‘How close were you to the person who treated you unfairly?’ (1 = not close at all; 5 = extremely close). Post-transgression offender effort was measured by summing and averaging the scores on three items: ‘The other person was sorry for what they did’; ‘the other person tried to make up for what they did’; and ‘the other person took responsibility for their actions’ (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) (a = .77).
Table 1 Summary of t-tests for differences between high and low severity conditions. Variable
High severity M (SD)
Unfair Distress Comparative hurt Relative serious BJW-self BJW-others Forgive–pos.a Forgive–neg.a Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitive
4.35 4.34 3.72 6.01 4.11 3.11 0.03 0.31 3.97 2.00 4.12
(0.85) (0.90) (0.90) (1.88) (0.86) (0.87) (1.94) (2.53) (1.26) (1.03) (0.85)
Low severity M (SD) 4.29 3.41 2.17 3.19 4.14 3.07 0.06 0.32 2.32 1.76 3.78
(0.77) (0.93) (1.09) (1.92) (0.83) (0.84) (1.84) (2.44) (1.49) (0.87) (0.86)
t
p
0.46 6.36 9.75 9.29 0.35 0.82 0.39 0.77 7.51 1.65 2.49
>1 .001 .001 .001 >1 >1 >1 >1 .001 >1 .01
High severity n = 79. Low severity n = 78. a standardized values.
Justice sensitivity was measured with the 10-item JS-Victim subscale of Schmitt et al. (2005) Justice Sensitivity scale (0 = not at all true; 5 = absolutely true). Higher summed and averaged scores indicate greater sensitivity to personal injustice (a = .86). 3. Results 3.1. Severity instructions manipulation checks Independent samples t-tests were conducted for differences between High and Low severity conditions (Table 1). Given that all participants were asked to think of an unfair event they had personally experienced, there was no difference between conditions on the perceived unfairness of the transgression. Also as expected, participants in the High (versus Low) severity condition were more likely to say the event was distressing, comparatively hurtful, and relatively serious. 3.2. Relations between severity condition, justice, and forgiveness Although BJW was measured after manipulating transgression recall, Table 1 shows there were no differences between High and Low severity conditions on BJW-self and BJW-others. There was no difference between severity conditions on forgiveness as positive or negative responding. However, as we foreshadowed, participants in the High severity condition were more likely than those in the Low severity condition to report being close to the person who had hurt them (Table 1). Consequently, we conducted an ANCOVA with closeness entered as a covariate. A significant difference between conditions emerged, with Low severity participants more likely to respond positively, F(1, 154) = 6.90, p = .01, g2 = .043 and less likely to respond negatively, F(1, 154) = 5.51, p = .02, g2 = .035. 3.3. Relations between BJW, relationship closeness, post-transgression offender effort, justice sensitivity, and forgiveness Correlations between key variables are presented in Table 2. Most notably, neither BJW variable was associated with positive responding, providing initial bivariate support for H1. BJW-self was negatively related to negative responding; closeness was positively associated with positive responding; offender effort was negatively associated with negative responding and positively related to positive responding; and justice sensitivity correlated positively with negative responding and negatively with BJW-self and positive responding.
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Table 2 Pearson product moment correlations between severity, bjw, closeness, offender effort, justice sensitivity, and forgiveness. 1 BJW-self BJW-others Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitivity Positive responding Negative responding
.24** .02 .01 .25** .12 .33**
3
.01 .07 .09 .01 .09
4
.26** .01 .37** .06
5
.02 .43** .24**
6
.22** .32**
N = 157. ** p < .001.
1
Predictor variable Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitivity Severity BJW-self BJW-others BJW-self X severity BJW-others X severity
2
3
B
SEB
t
1
Closeness Offender effort Justice sensitivity
0.00 0.61 0.90
0.12 0.20 0.21
.00 .23 .31
0.02 3.03* 4.23**
.156**
2
Severity BJW-self BJW-others
0.77 0.92 0.48
0.42 0.22 0.22
.15 .31 .16
1.83 4.13** 2.21*
.104**
3
BJW-self X severity BJW-others X severity
1.51 0.43
0.43 0.42
.37 .11
3.50** 1.03
.057**
b
Total R = .316**. Total Adj. R2 = .279**.. * p < .05. N = 157. ** p < .001.
0.32 0.69 0.46 0.68 0.19 0.07 1.15 0.00
0.08 0.14 0.15 0.30 0.16 0.16 0.31 0.30
R2D
t
b .27 .35 .21 .18 .08 .03 .37 .00
**
3.90 4.99** 3.15* 2.23* 1.17 0.45 3.75** 0.01
4
hi bjw lo bjw
.297**
3 .028 .062**
Total R2 = .387**. Total Adj. R2 = .354**. * p < .05. N = 157. ** p < .001.
4
2 1 0 -1 -2 -3
hi bjw lo bjw
3 Positive responding
SEB
2
Table 3 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis with closeness, post-transgression offender effort, justice sensitivity, severity, and bjw predicting positive responding. Step
Predictor variable
.64**
B
R2D
Step
Negative responding
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
2
Table 4 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis with closeness, post-transgression offender effort, justice sensitivity, severity, and bjw predicting negative responding.
-4 low
2
Severity
high
Fig. 2. The interaction of BJW-self and severity on negative responding.
1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 low
Severity
high
Fig. 1. The interaction of BJW-self and severity on positive responding.
We conducted two separate hierarchical regressions to test the extent to which BJW predicted forgiveness as positive or negative responding (H1, H2, H3), taking into account the potential moderating effect of transgression severity (H4, H5). The BJW variables were centered. Closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity were controlled for at step 1. We entered severity and the BJW variables at step 2. We then computed interaction terms for severity X each BJW variable and entered these interaction terms at step 3. Table 3 shows at step 1 closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity accounted for 30% of variance on positive responding,
F(3, 153) = 21.58, p < .001, with all three variables making significant unique contributions. Severity and BJW variables at step 2 did not add significantly to the model, Fchange(3, 150) = 2.04, p > 1. At step 3 the two interaction terms accounted for a further 6% of variance, Fchange(2, 148)=7.50, p = .001, with the severity X BJW-self interaction retaining a unique association, thereby qualifying H1. Simple slopes showed BJW-self was positively associated with positive responding for low severity (b = .36, t(77) = 3.38, p = .001) but not high severity transgressions (b = .11, t(78) = 0.95, p = .344) (Fig. 1). Table 4 shows at step 1 closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity predicted 16% of variance on negative responding, F(3, 153) = 9.42, p < .001, with offender effort and justice sensitivity making significant unique contributions. At step 2, severity and BJW predicted a further 10% of variance, Fchange(3, 150) = 7.00, p < .001. As expected, BJW-self was related to reduced negative responding (H2), whereas BJW-others was related to increased negative responding (H3). At step 3, the two interaction terms accounted for another 6% of variance, Fchange(2, 148) = 6.12, p = .003. As hypothesized (H4), there was a severity X BJW-self interaction. Examination of simple slopes indicated for low severity transgressions BJW-self was negatively associated with negative responding (ß = .56, t(77) = 5.84, p = .001). This relationship was non-significant for severe transgressions (ß = .11, t(78) = 0.99, p = .325) (Fig. 2). In contrast to expectations (H5), there was no interaction between BJW-others and severity.
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4. Discussion A personally-experienced transgression constitutes a threat to one’s just-world beliefs. Our results suggest that forgiveness enables people to deal with the threat in a way that is consistent with their beliefs, although it may depend on how forgiveness is operationalized. The nature of the forgiving response, meanwhile, seems to be related to the sphere of justice being measured. In the parlance of forgiveness, people with strong BJW-self are less likely to hold a grudge, avoid their transgressor, or seek revenge following a transgression. We might speculate that BJW-self encourages people to appreciate the wisdom of withholding a negative response. As much previous research has shown, inhibiting negative responding contributes to restored social harmony and victims’ psychological wellbeing (e.g., Worthington & Scherer, 2004). However, the relation between BJW-self and negative responding is contingent on transgression severity, consistent with our theorizing. On one hand, BJW-self may take a victim only so far when it comes to forgiving a serious transgression. On the other hand, BJW-self may enable people to better deal with life’s minor stressors. Although such events are relatively less hurtful they are also more prevalent in our everyday lives. Being able to let go of daily hassles contributes to healthy functioning and therefore at this level, at least, self-oriented just-world beliefs are important. Justice beliefs are related to quite opposite behaviors when BJW is measured on the basis of how just the world is for others. Controlling for closeness, offender effort, and justice sensitivity, BJW-others is associated with negative responding. However, contrary to expectations, there was no interaction between BJW-others and severity, suggesting that the experience of a transgression is sufficient to prompt the negative responding associated with BJW-others. Justice beliefs guide how one and others should act according to the personal contract (if one is a victim, one should refrain from negative responding; others who harm should be treated punitively). Neither sphere of BJW is necessarily concerned, therefore, with the wellbeing of another person. Accordingly, we found that justice beliefs are largely irrelevant to forgiveness as positive responding. Yet, unexpectedly, for transgressions of low severity BJW-self was positively associated with positive responding. However, if one responds positively for the sake of social harmony––a primary motivation for forgiveness (Tsang et al., 2006) and one which, crucially, also benefits the victim (even if the relationship is not close)––then the finding is consistent with BJW-self theorizing. Future research may test this new hypothesis. Although not our primary aim, we replicated the well-established relations between relationship closeness and post-transgression offender effort and forgiveness. Similar relations were observed for justice sensitivity, an individual difference variable that until now has not been applied to forgiveness. As expected, the more an individual feels sensitive to being victimized, the less likely they are to forgive. Importantly, just-world beliefs predicted forgiveness over and above these variables. Turning to the limitations of the present study, a key aspect involved varying transgression severity. Ideally we would have used a lab-based transgression. However, for obvious ethical reasons forgiveness-relevant paradigms can only be benign or abstracted (e.g., Santelli, Struthers, & Eaton, 2009). Yet, emotionally-resonant transgressions are necessary to prime both BJW motivations (Hafer & Bègue, 2005) and forgiveness (Worthington & Scherer, 2004). Thus, our design was a variation on the standard approach in forgiveness research, where participants recall a personally-experienced transgression. Although this meant trading off some internal validity, it enabled us to ensure that the injustice experienced was emotionally resonant (because of its personal relevance).
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A consequence of our approach was that, as we expected, participants under high severity instructions tended to recall transgressions by close others, whereas this was less likely for benign transgressions. Although we controlled for relationship closeness, this was a limitation. Nonetheless, it has at the same time provided an insight into the relationship between BJW and transgressionspecific forgiveness. BJW-self is more likely to be associated with forgiveness when a transgression is not very severe—and, based on our design, therefore more likely to have been enacted by someone to whom the victim is not close. Such a conclusion begs the question as to whether BJW-self would operate in the same way if a low severity transgression was performed by a close other. Theoretically, the association between BJW-self and forgiveness should be even stronger. Future research may also consider the process by which BJW relates to forgiveness, testing, for example, cognitive reframing (Dalbert, 2002) as a mediator. Further, our focus on forgiveness as possessing negative and positive dimensions reflects ‘traditional’ theorizing about the nature of forgiveness (e.g., Fincham, 2000; McCullough et al., 2003) but future studies may consider how justice beliefs relate to alternative conceptualizations of forgiveness. For example, recently forgiveness has been conceptualized on the basis of decisional and emotional dimensions (e.g., Worthington, Witvliet, Pietrini, & Miller, 2007). Finally, our findings speak to the broader issue of compatibility between justice and forgiveness. Our study adds to previous research which suggests that forgiveness and justice are not necessarily competitive when justice is concerned with inclusiveness. As we and a number of other researchers have found (e.g., Sutton & Douglas, 2005; Sutton & Winnard, 2007), partitioning justice into spheres relating to the self and others leads to different outcomes: one that is associated with negative responses and one that is associated with the inhibition of such responses. In short, the traditional disjunction between justice and forgiveness holds when we consider just-world beliefs about others. However, believing in justice for the self may be associated with forgiving responses, particularly when the transgression is not too severe. Acknowledgement This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0877945) to the first author. References Bègue, L. (2002). Beliefs in justice and faith in people: Just world, religiosity, and interpersonal trust. Personality and Individual Differences, 32, 375–382. Bègue, L., & Bastounis, M. (2003). Two spheres of belief in justice: Extensive support for the bidimensional model of belief in a just world. Journal of Personality, 71, 435–463. Bierhoff, H. (2002). Just world, social responsibility, and helping behavior. In M. J. Lerner, M. Ross, & D. T. Miller (Eds.), The justice motive in everyday life (pp. 189–203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalbert, C. (1999). The world is more just for me than generally: About the personal belief in a just world scale’s validity. Social Justice Research, 12, 79–98. Dalbert, C. (2002). Beliefs in a just world as a buffer against anger. Social Justice Research, 15, 123–145. Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. (2000). Helping clients forgive: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Fincham, F. D. (2000). The kiss of the porcupines: From attributing responsibility to forgiving. Personal Relationships, 7, 1–23. Fincham, F. D., Jackson, H., & Beach, S. R. H. (2005). Transgression severity and forgiveness: Different moderators of objective and subjective severity. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 860–875. Hafer, C. L. (2000). Do innocent victims threaten the belief in a just world? Evidence BJW and forgiveness from a modified Stroop task. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 165–173. Hafer, C. L., & Bègue, L. (2005). Experimental research on just-world theory: Problems, developments, and future challenges. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 128–167.
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