Interpersonal forgiveness in late childhood: Associations with peer status

Abstract

Although the topic of forgiveness has been studied extensively among adults, little is known about the factors that are associated with children’s forgiveness. The current research addressed the question whether a child’s social status in the classroom is related to the tendency to forgive offending peers. We particularly focused on two types of status: preference and popularity. We ran one study with two samples among 9–13 year-old children (n = 577) who completed a sociometric instrument and a self-reported forgiveness measure. We found some initial support that preference, but not popularity, is positively associated with forgiveness, even after accounting for transgression-specific characteristics, such as friendship bond with the offender and perceived offense severity. We discuss the theoretical implications among these findings for both understanding children’s forgiveness, and the differential role of preference and popularity as social status indicators.