Group‐level effects of forgiveness: Group cohesiveness and collective action in social dilemmas

Abstract

Forgiveness research has predominately focused on individual/relational outcomes such as well‐being and closeness. Less research has examined group outcomes such as cohesiveness or collective action. Forgiveness studies have also emphasized the victim's or transgressor's perspective, neglecting the effects of forgiveness on ingroup members who have neither given nor received forgiveness. We theorize that forgiveness promotes collective action among ingroup members through group cohesiveness and that transgressors' apologetic reactions impact this process. In a laboratory experiment, 229 students (175 females) were led to believe they were in a social dilemma with three others. Some participants witnessed group members forgive an apologetic, obstinate, or neutral defector, whereas others witnessed an unforgiving response. Forgiveness of apologetic and neutral defectors increased later cooperation among ingroup members. This effect was generally mediated by group cohesiveness. Our findings suggest that forgiveness can impact cooperation on a group level, providing a path to successful resolutions to collective action problems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

“…The observed link between the type of response and cooperation tendency can have important implications for the performance of cooperation strategies. For example, if cooperators typically assort together 47 48 49 , a positive response to heterogeneity may help in maintaining cooperation by ‘forgiving’ occasional non-cooperation by a member of the group due to mistakes or temporary inability 27 28 29 30 50 51 52 . The types of responsiveness we observe might be related to personality characteristics, such as differences in ‘lifestyle’.…”

The mediating role of group dynamics in shaping received social support from active and passive use in online health communities

“…Leveraging social media research, we divide OHC use into active (i.e., information sharing) and passive (i.e., information consumption) use i [e.g., 12,52,82] and examine how the way that people use OHCs can increase or decrease the social support they receive. We build on research that finds that group dynamics factors and social relationships can mediate the relationships between personal and situational characteristics and outcomes [e.g., 45,53,62,116] and posit that the relationship between use and received OHC social support is mediated by the nature of the OHCs. To study the nature of the OHCs, we draw on group dynamics research from psychotherapy research that has explained the importance of the three group dynamics of cohesiveness, altruism, and universality in increasing the effectiveness of group therapy [79,123].…”