The empowering effect of punishment on forgiveness

Abstract

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We examined the process by which punishment enables forgiveness, testing the proposition that punishment restores a sense of justice to victims, an experience that is empowering. In Study 1 (N = 69), university students received insulting feedback and were given the opportunity (or not) to sanction the offender. In Study 2 (N = 91), participants imagined having the opportunity (or not) to recommend punishment for a person who had vandalized their house. A two-step mediation model (punishment justice restoration empowerment forgiveness) was supported in these two studies. In Study 3 (N = 227), punishment options were expanded to test the role of victim voice in the context of third-party and personal retributive and restorative justice responses to workplace bullying, as well as taking into account revenge as an alternative to justice restoration. When victims had voice, empowerment again played a central indirect role in relations between punishment and forgiveness.

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