Apologies Promote Forgiveness and Restore Cooperation by Increasing Perceived Relationship Value

What happens in the human mind when someone forgives? Recent theoretical work predicts that the psychological mechanisms underlying forgiveness consult the victim’s perceptions of the transgressor’s relationship value and exploitation risk, and that apologies influence forgiveness by changing these perceptions. To date, however, there has been no direct empirical evidence showing that apologies influence forgiveness via perceptions of relationship value and exploitation risk. To address this research gap, we conducted three experiments. In Experiments 1 (N = 1,887) and 2 (a near-direct replication of Experiment 1; N = 421), we found mediational evidence that the influence of apologies on forgiveness may be due to the indirect effects of apologies on victims’ perceptions of the transgressor’s relationship value. In Experiment 3 (N = 971), we tested the causal effect of relationship value on forgiveness more directly by experimentally manipulating participants’ emotional closeness toward the transgressor. We found that experimentally induced closeness boosted forgiveness primarily by causing victims to retain their valuation of the relationship following the transgression. We discuss the theoretical applications of the finding that apologies improve forgiveness via an increase in evaluations of relationship value.