- [Amrisha] There's no doubt that
being social, being cooperative,
being what some people have called ultra cooperative
is in many ways our super power.
When those relationships are ruptured in some way
due to perhaps one person causing harm to another,
it's really important that we are able to
repair those relationships.
Forgiveness is a really critical part of that repair.
- [Man] Social ties are the basis of every
community on earth.
But those relationships are also fragile.
So how do we repair them when they're strained or broken?
(downbeat music)
Philosophy and religion have espoused the virtues
of forgiveness for millennia.
But the scientific study of forgiveness is fairly new.
- [Amrisha] My name is Amrisha Vaish and I study how
children behave cooperatively towards others
and learn to be moral individuals.
Causing harm, apologizing, showing remorse
feeling concerned for someone who's been harmed,
all of those are things that children pay attention to
very early on, really in the first year already.
And I think that tells us
something about who we are as a species.
- [Man] Amrisha's research involves observing different
interactions between a transgressor,
someone who does something hurtful,
and a victim, the person hurt by the transgressor.
By observing these interactions,
she has been able to see what actually matters
to children when they choose their friends
and collaborators and how we as adults could
re-examine our priorities when it comes to maintaining
these social ties.
In one study, two experimenters and one child,
all drew pictures
then the experimenters ripped the child's drawing.
- [Amrisha] And one of the transgressors now shows
remorse to the child.
So she says, Oh, I've torn your picture.
I didn't mean to do that.
It's my fault.
And the other transgressor is neutral.
So she says, Oh, I've torn your picture, Oh well.
So what we now do is ask whom they prefer.
Then what we found is that by five years of age
children clearly preferred the one who had shown remorse.
- [Man] By apologizing to the child,
the transgressor demonstrated a commitment
to maintaining their positive relationship.
That made the child want to maintain it too.
But in real life, our interactions always
have more background context.
Such as where we grew up,
where we went to school and what social
groups we align ourselves with.
So how do our group identities affect
our ability to choose who we associate with?
- [Amrisha] In a more recent study,
we placed children in a group.
Either a yellow group or a green group.
And then the two experimenters who came in,
one of them was in the same group as the child.
And the second experimenter was the outgroup member.
And so we had now same thing, everyone drew a picture
and both individuals accidentally tore the child's picture.
And this time both of them showed remorse.
And what we found is that, even though both
of them had shown remorse,
children very clearly preferred the ingroup individual.
- [Man] By the age of five,
children have already developed biases
for their group, their community.
But do children just prefer their own group
no matter how they treat them?
- [Amrisha] And so to follow up on this, we had same setup
but now the ingroup member did not show remorse.
But the outgroup member did show remorse.
And so even though she's in the outgroup
she's showing this kind of commitment to the child.
- [Man] Amrisha's team found
that children consistently prefer
the transgressor who showed remorse in this scenario
in spite of their different group identity.
- [Amrisha] And so here we see, what they really care about
is that the transgressor shows their commitment
to them, to the relationship.
And they will seek that person
out over even an ingroup member.
- [Man] When we apologize to someone outside of our group,
we signal to them that we recognize their humanity and
that we want to treat them well,
regardless of what group they're in.
We're also acknowledging that a relationship
with them could be valuable to us.
Being in different groups
doesn't have to define how we interact.
And when we forgive an individual from another group,
we're allowing them to try and bridge that gap too.
The more often we can practice these skills
the greater chance we have of building trust
and relationships between groups
that may seem vastly different.
- [Amrisha] We humans are such a super social species.
We really rely on each other to succeed,
to achieve what we want to achieve both
as individuals and as a community.
To do that it's really vital that we
maintain and sustain our corporative relationships.
We wouldn't survive without them, absolutely.
(downbeat music)
- [Man] To learn more about challenging ideas
like this, visit us at templeton.org/bigquestions.
(downbeat music)