The Power of Forgiveness

Abstract

Forgiveness plays an important role in the maintenance of interpersonal relationships. We argue that although victims who forgive relinquish their right to punish their transgressors and consequently sacrifice punishment-based power, forgiving transgressors increases how much power victims feel that they possess over their transgressors. Across five studies, those who forgave their transgressors reported having more power over their transgressors than did those who did not forgive their transgressors. Victims’ beliefs that forgiveness signaled that they had moved beyond the transgression and had taken control of the transgression’s resolution mediated the link between forgiveness and power. Furthermore, forgiveness did not reliably alter transgressors’ perceptions of how much power victims held over them. These findings contribute to the extant literature on forgiveness by identifying an unexplored benefit of forgiving one’s transgressor - a perceived sense of power over one’s transgressor.