A critical decision for a victim involved in social conflict is whether he or she should take retaliation or forgiveness. Actual social occurrences show how often social conflicts are escalated by the reciprocation of retaliation. On the other hand, if a victim makes forgiveness, it does not only evoke cooperative responses from the offender (Kellen & Ellard, 1999), but also bring maintenance of the relationship with the offender (Rose & Asher, 1999), leading constructive conflict resolution. Furthermore, forgiveness contributes to well-being and to reduce negative emotions of victims (Enright & Freedman, 1997). As mentioned above, forgiveness is beneficial to both of victim and other participants, it is difficult for a victim to actually forgive an offender. Theoretically analyzing the conditions which hinder victim’s forgiveness, in the present study, we attempted to explore how audience’s responses enhance forgiveness.
