Figure 4. Time-frequency analysis results. A, Grand averages of event-related oscillations (ERO) energy for alpha bands (8~13 Hz). B, Alpha oscillation. C, The value of the frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). A higher FAA score means stronger activity in the left hemisphere. Forg-Fri, forgive friend condition; Comp-Fri, complain friend condition; Forg-Str, forgive stranger condition; Comp-Str, complain stranger condition.*p < .05.

Discussion

Combined with a word identification test and EEG techniques, this study examined reactive attitudes and the associated neural correlates toward wrongdoers with varied interpersonal distances. It is found, in both the behavioral and electrophysiological measures, that individuals were more inclined to forgive rather than complain about the friend-wrongdoer: they reacted faster and exhibited lower alpha oscillation and FAA value to “forgive-friend” than to “complain-friend” word pairs. Whereas, no such behavioral or neural biases were found for the stranger-wrongdoer, individuals with similar reaction time, alpha oscillation, or FAA to “forgive-stranger” and “complain-stranger” combinations. These results suggest that forgiveness is more likely to occur within a close interpersonal relationship, even when measured implicitly.
Behaviorally, we found that people spent less time reacting to the “forgive-friend” than to “complain-friend” combinations (Figure 2D), even though their attention was directed to target words (i.e., categorizing words related to forgive or complain) rather than word pairs, which suggested that the former is more congruent with their implicit attitude. This finding aligns well with numerous explicit studies showing that closeness promotes forgiveness, either measured by self-reported forgiveness, deliberate economic decisions, or aggressive performance (Fatfouta et al., 2018; Karremans et al., 2011; Li et al., 2021). Our findings generalize previous findings depending on the above explicit measures (Karremans et al., 2011; Karremans & Aarts, 2007) into situations where forgiveness was measured implicitly and hence minimized confounding factors such as social desirability. Therefore, we are now confident in the effect of interpersonal distance on forgiveness: the closer, the more forgiveness. However, negative results of reaction time were found in the stranger-wrongdoer condition, which is inconsistent with our hypothesis but understandable. Combining with the main effect of interpersonal distance on reaction time that individuals responded more slowly in the stranger condition, negative findings found here might fit with the notion that people did not shift their attitude from negative to positive, and thus the reaction speed was disturbed by their negative attitudes towards stranger-wrongdoers. A pertinent study conducted by He et al. (2018) found that individuals who underwent social exclusion exhibited a reduced fixation duration on the wrongdoers (i.e., people who socially exclude them), which may indicate a deliberate avoidance of processing information relevant to someone they have not yet forgiven. Supported evidence also from a previous study demonstrating in an adapted version of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm that, only when stranger wrongdoers did apologize, victims reduced their reactive aggression and hold less negative attitudes (Beyens et al., 2015). In general, the present study employed an implicit method and purely showed the benefits of interpersonal distance on implicit forgiveness attitude.
Neurally, in line with our hypothesis, lower alpha oscillation and FAA were observed for the “forgive-friend”, relative to the “complain-friend”, combinations (Figure 4). As mentioned in the introduction that alpha oscillation reflects an inhibitory process, we speculated that the lower alpha oscillation presents less attentional resources allocated to process congruent word pairs (i.e., “forgive-friend”), while the higher alpha oscillation of “complain-friend” corresponds to the more resource recruited to inhibit incongruent information. The neural responses found here are consistent with an electrophysiological study conducted by Schiller et al. (2016), where they used the microstate approach to identify and time the entire chain of metal processes unfolded during the Implicit Association Test. They found an additional inhibitory process involved in the incongruent condition (Schiller et al., 2016), which might help individuals overcome the automatic evaluation of stimuli that are incompatible with their inner attitudes. Also, we observed a significant decrease (or more precisely, more negative) value in the FAA toward forgive- than complain-friend combinations, suggesting a relatively greater activation in the right prefrontal network. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that forgiveness or other prosocial decisions toward wrongdoers rely on activation within the right prefrontal cortex (the dorsolateral and ventrolateral, DLPFC/VLPFC), crucial brain regions in top-down cognitive control (Brüne et al., 2013; Will et al., 2015). Moreover, evidence by using noninvasive brain modulation techniques has also causally revealed the relationship between the right DLPFC and forgiveness: both Maier et al. (2018) and Müller-Leinß et al. (2018) found in the Ultimatum Game that inhibitory stimulation over the right DLPFFC reduced forgiveness, reflected in the less tolerance for unfair proposals and increased punishment regarding previously unfair opponents, respectively. The neural basis of forgiving friends may involve voluntarily invoking more prefrontal cognitive resources, thereby suppressing the input of complain-related information.
To note, our ERP results showed a main effect in the frontal N2 amplitude, that is, we observed that the amplitude of the frontal N2 was more negative in forgive than complain condition whereas it did not distinguish between friend and stranger (Figure 3C). Given that the N2 component is a sensitive index in early top-down attentional engagement and conflict monitoring (Clayson & Larson, 2013), the larger amplitude of N2 evoked by the forgive-label words might due to the psychological salience after being offended, because individuals have to contend with instinct reaction like complaint or counterattack (see Smart & Leary, 2009 for a review). More importantly, we found a significant interaction in the frontal P3 amplitude (Figure 3D). Specifically, while no significant differences were found in the friend condition, individuals had enhanced P3 amplitude when reacting to the complain-stranger than forgive-stranger combinations. The P3 has been widely associated with the motivated attention and elaborative processing of emotionally salient stimuli (see Hajcak & Foti, 2020 for a review). Thus, enhanced P3 amplitude in the stranger-wrongdoer condition may reflect an encoding bias for the “complain-stranger” combination that is consistent with inner attitude. It is also noteworthy that, only in the stranger-wrongdoer condition, a positive correlation was observed between offended experience and self-reported forgiveness. We thus speculate that negative appraisal and corresponding neural response toward stranger wrongdoers may play a vital role in the future escalation of conflicts.
Besides the main findings above, we also attempted to discuss the contradictory argument, that is, love well, whip well. Here, we speculated that the contradiction might derive from the different methods of inducing offensive experiences. Previous studies provided important insights on offended inducing, either presented individuals with unfair allocation proposals (e.g., the Ultimatum Game; Campanhã et al., 2011; Will et al., 2015) or made participants ostracized (e.g., the Cyberball Paradigm; Dorn et al., 2014; Eisenberger et al., 2003). Whereas, the unpleasantness of being unfairly treated may pale in comparison to the hurtful feelings caused by social exclusion and isolation, as the latter presents the breakdown of the essential of relatedness (Deci et al., 2001; Kluwer et al., 2020). In this sense, individuals might become more hurtful when offended by someone close in severe offensive scenarios, while they are more inclined to forgive the intimate for relatively mild offensive events. The present study focused solely on the uncomfortable physiological feelings caused by noise (a relatively mild offensive context). To gain a more comprehensive knowledge of the relationship between interpersonal distance and forgiveness, it may be beneficial to examine and compare the effect of mild and major offenses in a single study.
Some limitations should be noticed when interpreting the current findings. First, we recruited dyads of college friends, rather than lovers, couples, or any other intimate relationships; therefore, caution is needed when applying the study findings to different populations. Another important limitation pertains to the method of inducing offended experience. While the present study induced offensive feelings by presenting high-intensity noise, moral offenses (e.g., betrayal, lying, etc.) are more hurtful and may lead to worse consequences (Koutsos et al., 2008). Hence, whether the findings that interpersonal distance promotes forgiveness still hold in severe moral offenses situations, or arise an opposite outcome. In addition, forgiveness is embodied in personal interaction and the ex-post actions of wrongdoers certainly affect the forgiveness decision of victims (Beyens et al., 2015; Li et al., 2021). We suggest future studies using hyper-scanning techniques to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying forgiveness in real-life social interactions with high ecological validity.
Nevertheless, our findings have valuable implications for interpersonal connectivity and conflict coping. Specifically, while the effect of interpersonal distance on forgiveness is widely investigated in the social cognitive domain, this study provides pure empirical evidence of this intricate phenomenon via implicit paradigm and electrophysiological measures. In this study, it is found that the forgive-related response is associated with increased activity in the right-hemisphere frontal cognitive control network (see also Maier et al., 2018; Müller-Leinß et al., 2018, 2018; Will et al., 2015), which indicates that integrating cognitive control training with brain stimulation seems to be a promising method to promote forgiveness for individuals caught in interpersonal distress. In addition, this study provides valuable insights for wrongdoers. Establishing friendly relationships in daily life and promptly offering sincere apologies might facilitate forgiveness and prevent conflicts from escalating (Beyens et al., 2015; Gao et al., 2021; Witvliet et al., 2020).
In conclusion, both behavioral and electrophysiological measures indicate that closeness facilitates forgiveness. Specifically, individuals hold a relatively forgiving attitude towards the friend wrongdoer and recruited more cognitive resources to suppress complaint-related information, whereas they retained a negative attitude towards the stranger wrongdoer and exhibited a processing bias for complain-stranger information.

Acknowledgments

This Project was granted financial support from the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Fund from Ministry of Education of China (grant number 20YJC190011).

Data and code availability

The data and code of this study would be available upon reasonable request and with the approval of the School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, and College of Education, Shanghai Normal University. More information on making this request can be obtained from the corresponding author, X. Li (lxuthus@shnu.edu.cn).

Author contributions

S. Li, G. Shangguan, and X. Li, designed the research; S. Li and X. Su performed the experiment; X. Li, S. Li, and S. Cheng analyzed data; X. Li, S. Li, S. Cheng, and G. Shangguan wrote the paper.

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Tables

Table 1 Descriptive statistical results of forgiveness degree and familiarity of forgive- and complain-label words (M ±SE ).