Figure 1. Illustration of the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale
Words of forgiveness and
complaint. To examine an individual’s reactive attitude toward the
wrongdoers, twelve words with forgiveness or complaint
attribution
(six words for each) were selected before the study, the details are as
follows. First, 100 two-character Chinese words (40/40 related to
forgiveness/complaint, 20 neutral filling stimuli) were collected from
several thesauruses. Second, another thirty-one homogeneous college
students were recruited to evaluate the forgiveness degree and the
familiarity on
a
9-point Likert scale (9 being very similar to forgiveness, very
familiar; 1 being very opposite of forgiveness, very unfamiliar,
respectively) of the all random-order words. Finally, 6/6 words
representing forgiveness/complaint were reserved according to the
ranking of the above indicators. Independent t -test results of
the words showed that the forgive-label words were significantly higher
than the complain-label words in forgiveness degree (t (10) =
27.441, p < 0.001; forgive- vs. complain-label =
7.45 ± 0.13 vs. 2.15 ± 0.15). And
there was no significant difference between the forgive- and
complain-label words in familiarity (t (10) = 1.376, p =
0.199; forgive- vs. complain-label = 8.02 ± 0.11 vs. 7.83 ± 0.07).
Detailed results are listed in Table 1.
Noise for inducing the feeling of offended . Unpleasant noise
stimuli were edited by version 3.0.0 of Audacity(R)11Audacity®
software is copyright © 1999-2021 Audacity Team. Web site:
https://audacityteam.org/. and delivered via
stereo.
High-intensity noise was classified as 80 dB, low-intensity noise was
classified as 50 dB, and no noise indicates a relatively quiet state.
These noise stimuli were proved to induce strong emotional responses and
physical instincts without permanent damage to hearing or nervous
systems (Chester & Lasko, 2019; Lasko & Chester, 2022).
Experiment procedures
The experiment consisted of the
following three phases.
Phase 1: Measurement of interpersonal distance .
Participants
were required to take part in our experiment accompanied by their best
friend (same gender).
On
the day of the experiment, the two real
participants
together with one sham stranger participant from our lab came and were
first informed to complete IOS scales aimed at each other. They received
introductions together and were then assigned to three separate rooms.
Phase 2: Offended experience induction .
In
the cover story, all three participants were instructed that this study
was designed to investigate the processing of tacit understanding
between peers via an online interactive task (an adapted version
of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm).
In
brief, they would
choose
one from two poker cards respectively, and
the
congruous choice with the peer meant a tacit understanding; vice versa
(Li et al., 2021; Zhu et al.,
2019).
To
induce offended experiences without suspicion, two roles were set in theonline interactive task , i.e., the passive and the active.
The former
would
receive noise for the
incongruous
trials between peers, and the latter controlled the noise intensity
(high/low).
A
rock-paper-scissors intranet program was used to assign roles, with the
loser acting the passive role.
In
reality, the real participant would always lose and then acted as the
passive one deservedly.
Besides,
the participant believed that both the friend and the stranger were
successful in getting the active role, and
soon
afterward was punished with the noise intensity selected by the friend
or the stranger in all incongruous trials. Nobody doubted the rule and
no one reported unbearable discomfort with the noise.
Specifically,
as shown in Figure 2A, each trial began with a fixation (0.2 s),
followed by the presentation of a name-photo pairing of the friend or
the stranger for 2.5 s to indicate who would be interacting with in this
trial. At the same time, the opposite player would select the noise
intensity for the passive player. Names and photos of all participants
were collected beforehand. The photo size was 163 × 210 pixels, blue
background (RGB: 35, 35, 255), adjusted by Adobe Photoshop CS6. Next,
the participant was required to select one from two poker cards by
pressing the “F” or “J” key to assess the
tacit
understanding. A “waiting” interval then lasted for 1, 1.5, or 2 s to
create a more authentic sense of interaction. The noise intensity
(high/low) selected by the opponent player was presented for 1 s
subsequently.
Finally,
the preset outcome feedback and corresponding noise were displayed for 1
s. Eighty trials in total were included (40/40 trials: friend/stranger).
The probability of incongruous feedback was 60% (48 trials in total),
and the ratio of high-intensity noise chosen by the opponent player was
80% in both friend and stranger trials. The whole procedure would take
about 10 min.
To
avoid any interference with the subsequent reactive attitude task,offended
experience, and explicit forgiveness were measured at the end of
the experiment, with a 9-point Likert scale (9 being highly offended,
highly forgive;
1
being no offended, cannot forgive, respectively).
Phase 3: Measurement of reactive attitude. The formal task, i.e.,word identification test , was used to evaluate the reactive
attitude toward the friend- and the stranger-wrongdoer. Four types of
trials, i.e.,
Forg-Fri,
Comp-Fri, Forg-Str, and Comp-Str, were randomly presented in this task
(48 trials for each). As shown in Figure 2B, each trial began with a
fixation (0.2~0.5 s), followed by a name-word
combination for a maximum of 2 s, during which participants were
instructed to judge whether the word is a synonym for forgiveness (e.g.,
“原谅”, “谅解”) or an antonym (e.g., “埋怨”, “指责”) by pressing
the “F/J” keyboard. The button assignment was counterbalanced across
participants. A blank screen appeared for 1 s at the end of each trial.
The whole procedure would take about 10 min.
In
the preprocessing analysis, data with response accuracy higher than 80%
were reserved for further analysis. Then the trials with reacting time
of less than 450 ms were excluded from the subsequent analyses and
reacting time for each error trial was replaced with the mean reacting
time for that block plus a 400 ms penalty (Karpinski & Steinman, 2006).
All stimuli were presented in the center of a 17-inch LCD screen with
black backgrounds via E-prime 3.0 software (Psychology Software Tools,
Sharpsburg, USA). The viewing angle was 3.0 × 3.5° with a distance of
60~70 cm from the participants’ eyes.