Search

People who experience a strong need to belong might be particularly inclined to forgive wrongdoings to preserve social bonds. Three studies that utilized different methods and measures of forgiveness consistently demonstrated this is not the case. The authors found that individuals high in the need to belong report practicing forgiveness with less frequency and value it no more than those low in the need to belong (Study 1). In Study 2, they found that satisfying the need to belong led participants to express greater willingness to forgive hypothetical offenses compared to participants in a control group. Finally, in Study 3, the authors linked the need to belong to forgiveness of specific transgressions and found that this negative relationship was mediated by offense-related anger and perceptions of offense severity. These findings suggest that needing to belong paradoxically interferes with forgiveness, even though forgiving could promote the satisfaction of belongingness needs following transgressions.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02456.x Byline: Ryan P. Brown (1), Lindsey L. Osterman (1), Collin D. Barnes (1) Abstract: ABSTRACT We investigated the hypothesis that a sociocultural variable known as the culture of honor would be uniquely predictive of school-violence indicators. Controlling for demographic characteristics associated in previous studies with violent crime among adults, we found that high-school students in culture-of-honor states were significantly more likely than high-school students in non-culture-of-honor states to report having brought a weapon to school in the past month. Using data aggregated over a 20-year period, we also found that culture-of-honor states had more than twice as many school shootings per capita as non-culture-of-honor states. The data revealed important differences between school violence and general patterns of homicide and are consistent with the view that many acts of school violence reflect retaliatory aggression springing from intensely experienced social-identity threats. Author Affiliation: (1)The University of Oklahoma Article History: (R eceived 2/09/09; R evision accepted 3/21/09) Article note: Address correspondence to Ryan Brown, 455 W. Lindsey St., Dale Hall Tower, Room 705, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019-2007, e-mail: rpbrown@psychology.ou.edu.