Empathy, Forgiveness and Vengeance in adolescents

JOSÉ EDUARDO MORENO

Denver, Colorado, USA

Congreso; SRCD 2009 Biennial Meeting; 2009

Society for Research on Child Development

Empathy, Forgiveness and Vengeance in adolescents.  Dr. José Eduardo Moreno The objective of this research was to evaluate the influence of Empathy over behaviors manifested after offensive situations. An offense can jeopardize interpersonal ties. When this happens, conflict erupts and disagreement appears. There is a process of withdrawal, which tends to involve a lot of emotions, and which generates different reactions. As regards offensive situations there are three main groups of responses which are made up of seven specific categories: passive responses (submission and negation), aggressive responses (hostile reactions, resentment and vengeance) and prosocial responses (request for explanation and forgiveness). The ability to forgive is considered important in the successful maintenance of relationships. The investigation of the correlates of forgiveness in children and adolescents has progressed at a much slower pace (Goss, 2006). Empathy is a variable that is important in promoting forgiveness (Toussaint & Webb, 2005). Moreover, empathy is considered a key factor that makes it possible to inhibit an individual’s aggression and also constitutes a powerful cognitive and emotional bond among people which, the same as love, counteracts human destructiveness when making the human being aware of the human. (Casarino, 1996). The sample of this research comprised 357 fifteen-year-old students (146 males, 211 females). The instruments used were the Empathy Scale of the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I; Bar-On, 1994), translation into Spanish by Gómez Dupertuis and Moreno (1995, 1996), and the Attitudes Towards Offenders Scale (ATOS, Moreno and Pereyra, 2000). ATOS was built in the shape of 10 brief stories; each story has 7 items, one for each kind of specific attitude: submission, negation, hostile reactions, resentment, vengeance; request for explanation and forgiveness (total= 70 items). The participants were asked to identify themselves with the victim of the story, and then choose from a 4-point scale ranging from 4 (always), to 3 (frequently), to 2 (hardly ever), to 1 (never). The regression analysis shows that empathy is positively related to prosocial attitudes (Request for explanation  R square= .05  Beta = .231 p= .0001 and Forgiveness  R square= .09  Beta = .301 p= .0001) and negatively related to aggressive attitudes (Hostile reactions  R square= .03  Beta = -.172 p= .001 , Resentment R square= .04  Beta = -.187  p= .0001 and Vengeance R square= .16  Beta = -.402  p= .0001). It is not related to passive attitudes (Submission  R square= .005  Beta = .073  p= .16  and Negation  R square= .01  Beta = -.100  p= .06). The empathy, of the seven dimensions which were studied, mostly explains the variance of vengeance and forgiveness. From the seven type of response towards an offender, empathy seems to have an inhibiting effect of aggressive responses and, particularly, of vengeance which involves the maximun level of aggressiveness. It coincides with Michael McCullough’s study (2000) which proved that the rise in empathy meant a closer relationship afterwards and less desire either to avoid the offender or seek revenge. Besides, empathy is the original cause of prosocial responses, especially of forgiveness.