著者

高田 奈緒美 大渕 憲一

出版者

日本社会心理学会

雑誌

社会心理学研究 (ISSN:09161503)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.24, no.3, pp.208-218, 2009

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In distinguishing internal forgiveness and forgiving behavior, we attempted to identify different motives for these two modes of forgiveness and to examine the effects of interpersonal relationships with offenders and the motives behind forgiveness. Participants recalled personal episodes in which someone hurt them and rated the episodes in terms of the closeness between them and the offender, forgiveness, and the motives for forgiveness. A factor analysis of the motives produced 6 dimensions: need for acceptance, maintenance of relationship, pervasiveness of negative event, maintenance of social harmony, non-commitment, and consideration. We regarded consideration and pervasiveness of negative events as altruistic and the others as egocentric motives. Noncommitment did not correlate with either forgiveness or forgiving behavior. Need for acceptance correlated only with forgiving behavior. Other motives were positively correlated with both internal forgiveness and forgiving behavior. Our results showed that the maintenance of a relationship was highest in conflicts with high-close others. They also showed that need for acceptance, pervasiveness of a negative event, and maintenance of social harmony were higher in conflict with high-close and middle-close others than with low-close others.