Collaborative Research: Forgiveness, Revenge, and Social Status in Groups

合作研究：群体中的宽恕、报复和社会地位这个项目调查了促使个人追求宽恕或报复的社会因素。报复行为会损害人际关系和事业，并招致报复或法律制裁。宽恕可以避免这些风险，但反而会使宽恕者容易受到剥削。理解人们为什么追求宽恕或报复是一个重要的科学难题，也是一个紧迫的实际问题。为了回答这个问题，该项目调查了宽恕或报复在群体中被重视和奖励的条件。该项目通过解释宽恕和报复行为如何影响个人在群体中的社会地位，并通过严格的方法验证这一解释，有助于理解社会。这项研究结合了一项具有全国代表性的调查，调查了美国人对宽恕和报复的态度，并进行了实验室实验，研究了人们在看到宽恕或报复行为时的表现，以及人们自己为什么会做出这些行为。鉴于冲突无处不在、报复的代价和宽恕的挑战，这项研究可能会产生一些更广泛的影响。从广义上讲，该项目讲述了围绕有争议的政治、粉丝暴力和国家认同等问题的冲突。通过解释为什么有些群体会重视报复或宽恕，这项研究可以帮助我们理解为什么有些冲突很快得到解决（当争论者选择宽恕时），而另一些冲突则失控（当争论者选择报复时）。通过实现这些目标，研究可以帮助我们找到更有效的冲突解决策略。该研究也有助于研究生和本科生的培养。过去对复仇和宽恕的研究主要集中在微观或宏观层面的因素上，这使得社会学家呼吁更多地关注中观层面的因素，如群体内部和群体间的过程。为了响应这一呼吁，该项目开发并测试了一些假设，这些假设的中心思想是，在某些条件下，宽恕或报复行为会产生群体利益，因此被视为值得群体成员尊重、威望和尊重的社会地位。该项目还调查了群体是否倾向于将宽恕与报复视为相对更有地位的行为，以及群体如何影响个人做出宽恕或报复行为。为了回答这些问题，该项目采用了一个调查实验和两个行为实验室实验。调查实验（研究1）使用具有全国代表性的美国成年人样本来调查美国人认为报复或宽恕是值得社会地位的条件。它在三种不同的社会背景下这样做：政治、体育和民族认同。实验室实验将通过使用社会地位的行为测量（研究2）来补充调查实验，并评估当他们的群体有用社会地位奖励这些行为的历史时，个体是否会从事更多的报复或宽恕行为（研究3）。通过将具有全国代表性的调查数据（包括三个不同社会身份的概念重复）与行为实验室实验相结合，该设计加强了我们研究结果的外部和内部有效性。

Collaborative Research: Forgiveness, Revenge, and Social Status in GroupsThis project investigates the social factors that encourage individuals to pursue either forgiveness or revenge. Vengeful behavior harms relationships and careers, and invites retaliation or legal sanctions. Forgiveness avoids these risks, but can instead make the forgiver vulnerable to exploitation. Understanding why people pursue forgiveness or revenge is an important scientific puzzle and a pressing practical concern. To answer this question, the project investigates the conditions under which forgiveness or revenge will be valued and rewarded in groups. The project contributes to understanding society by developing an explanation for how forgiving and vengeful behaviors shape individuals' social standing in groups, and testing this explanation with rigorous methods. The research combines a nationally representative survey on Americans' attitudes towards forgiveness and revenge with laboratory experiments that examines how people behave when they observe forgiving or vengeful behavior, as well as why people engage in these behaviors themselves. Given the ubiquity of conflict, the costs of revenge, and the challenges of forgiveness, the research may have a number of broader impacts. Broadly, the project speaks to conflicts around issues such as contentious politics, fan violence, and national identity. By explaining why some groups will value revenge or forgiveness, the research could help us understand why some conflicts are resolved quickly (when disputants choose forgiveness) while others spiral out of control (when disputants choose revenge). By achieving these goals, the research can help point us towards more effective conflict resolution strategies. The research also contributes to the training of graduate and undergraduate students.Past work in understanding revenge and forgiveness focuses on micro- or macro-level factors, leading sociologists to call for greater attention to meso-level factors, such as intra and intergroup processes. Responding to this call, the project develops and tests hypotheses centered on the idea that, under certain conditions, acts of forgiveness or revenge produce group benefits, and as a result are viewed as worthy of social status -- respect, prestige, and esteem -- from group members. The project also investigates whether groups tend to view forgiveness versus revenge as relatively more status-worthy, and how groups influence individuals to engage in forgiving or vengeful behaviors. To answer these questions, the project employs a survey experiment and two behavioral lab experiments. The survey experiment (Study 1) uses a nationally representative sample of US adults to examine the conditions under which Americans view revenge or forgiveness as worthy of social status. It does so for three different social contexts: politics, sports, and national identity. The lab experiments will complement the survey experiment by using a behavioral measure of social status (Study 2) and evaluating whether individuals engage in more vengeful or forgiving behavior when their groups have a history of rewarding these behaviors with social status (Study 3). By combining nationally-representative survey data (including three conceptual replications with different social identities) with behavioral lab experiments, the design strengthens both the external and internal validity of our findings.