The Power of Mercy

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Over the course of our lives, we all accrue a ledger of the wrongs done to us. For some of us, that ledger is long and detailed. We find ourselves poring over the pages again and again, accounting for each betrayal, tallying every injustice, adding up the petty cruelties. We sit with these wrongs done to us, and as time slides by, our anger festers instead of fading away. This week on Hidden Brain, we begin a series on forgiveness and apologies. We'll consider why holding a grudge can feel bad and good at the same time. And we look at why the process of forgiveness can sometimes be a long struggle Between head and heart.

This journey has its own twists and turns, and there can be surprises. There can be times of incredible, effortful intentionality that feel almost fruitless. But there are other times where that persistence can all of a sudden be met with, like, an aha revelation, a gift.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram Teen Accounts automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

Working as a dedicated Fidelity advisor, I always ask, what's important to you? I'll look at those priorities and goals alongside your full financial picture to build a comprehensive plan designed to help grow and protect your wealth. With proactive portfolio insights and an eye on taxes, I'm here to help you make the most of your money. I'm Laura Maxwell, and I'm a dedicated Fidelity advisor. Learn more at fidelity.com/wealth. Investment minimums apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. Granting forgiveness for the wrongs done to us is one of the hardest things human beings can do. At Hope College in Michigan, psychologist Charlotte Whitfleet studies the psychological barriers and effects of forgiveness. She and others have examined why forgiveness is hard and the transformative effects of forgiveness on both victims and transgressors. Charlotte Whitfleet, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you, Shankar. It's a joy to be with you.

Charlotte, you're a researcher, but you've also spent a lot of time in clinical settings working with patients. What kind of hurts and traumas do people tell you that they are carrying around?

It's so rare that someone has come into a clinical setting and not had some sort of deep interpersonal pain that felt unfair or unjust to them. There are all sorts of betrayals. There are betrayals from childhood, betrayals in friendship, in families, in romantic relationships. Infidelities, having your reputation maligned, all sorts of hurts show up.

And some of us carry these hurts around for years, even decades, right?

Oh, yes. That's the powerful thing about memory. Something that happened in the past can be currently embodied.

Something that happens this week can activate powerfully painful memories of something that happened Before we talk about the science of forgiveness and the effects of forgiveness, Charlotte, I want to talk a moment about the barriers to forgiveness, why forgiveness can be so hard. I want to play you a clip from the television show Frasier, where the title character, Frasier Crane, is a radio host and psychotherapist. And he's trying to convince his father to bury the hatchet with an old friend who's in the hospital.

Dad, we are talking about a few minutes out of your life, just long enough to sit there and have a little chat with a very sick man. I don't see why that's so impossible for you.

Now, come on. Believe me, you'll be glad you did. Hey, listen, sonny boy. That sanctimonious tone may wow them on the radio, but it doesn't cut any ice with me. When I say no, that's just what I mean. I'm not sitting and chatting with Artie Walsh.

You know, many of us have had the experience of feeling like Frasier Crane's father there, Charlotte. It doesn't feel enjoyable to hold a grudge, to remember the times that we've been hurt. But we also find it very difficult to let go of our hurts And you and others have studied why it is this happens. What do you find?

So often, I think we seek vindication. And one of the things that we found early on was that when people were thinking about the offense, nursing a grudge took the edge off their sadness. And it actually led them to feel a greater sense of perceived control.

Hmm.

And a little less bad, although overall, they still had the same high levels of anger.

Can you talk for a moment how for many people, letting go of a grudge doesn't even seem like it's possible? They don't even realize that they actually have a choice.

I think that our emotions are so powerful. And when we're distressed and we see so clearly what is so very wrong, We aren't in a mode of thinking flexibly. We don't always go to the place of saying we can tell the truth about how wrong it is, and we can tell the truth about the humanity of the other person. Those things can be really a big stretch for us.

Hmm.

When we are deeply distressed and acutely aware of how wrong You mentioned something a second ago about the role that our emotions are playing. You and others have studied how grudges produce anger, but also in some ways how anger then in turn feeds a grudge. Can you talk about this almost symbiotic relationship between the hurts we carry, the grudges we hold, and the emotion of anger?

Yeah, so anger is something that we experience subjectively. But we also experience it in a very embodied kind of way. And it can put us in a place of almost inflexibility, where we are on the lookout for evidence that we're right and that we have reason to be angry. We can be on the lookout for clues that the person is really as bad as we feel like they are based on the behavior. We can tell the story of what happened in such a way that it really conveys our powerful emotions, almost amping up the adjectives and adverbs that communicate the force of our emotions, but that can also amp up the contempt and condemnation that we experience. And those things sort of solidify the anger, solidify the narrative, and solidify That place of emotional inflexibility. Even when we encounter things that might help us get out of that loop, we're inclined to dismiss them and instead tell the story in a way that supports our remaining in that grudge mode.

I want to talk about one last barrier to forgiveness. Sometimes I think We believe that we can ask people to forgive in the absence of accountability, in the absence of what you might call psychological safety. Some years ago, we did an episode on a forgiveness ceremony in a war-torn country— this was Sierra Leone— where perpetrators would confess their crimes over a bonfire, and victims were expected to immediately forgive them. They gave me a knife to kill his father. But what I did was not my choice. Please forgive me. I have accepted and I have agreed to forgive him. But when the researcher Angela Dubé later measured the effectiveness of the technique on psychological well-being, here is what she found.

This process of talking about the past is actually painful and personally difficult for people, as manifest in worsened psychological well-being in these communities. So we have, you know, 3 different measures that we look at: anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. And we find that all 3 outcomes are actually worse in the communities that have gone through this process. And we think this is consistent with the idea that going through these memories of war in a short, intense fashion can actually reopen some old wounds.

Charlotte, can you talk about this idea that trying to force forgiveness, especially in maybe this short, intense way, without perhaps proper accountability, that in some ways it could backfire on our ability to be forgiving?

Yes. When we have horrifying hurts, traumas, to put people in a position where they're expected to confront that pain and open it up on someone else's terms, but without the sort of time to process them, as well as without the sense of agency that I'm deciding to do this. This is a choice of mine, and I'm Committing to it. We often have to hit the pause button and say, first, we need to care about safety. I mean, physical safety, emotional safety, psychological safety, sexual safety, spiritual safety. If we haven't assured safety, and if we don't have plans in place for accountability that halts the harms, we can actually add deep hurt to the existing hurt and put people at greater risk.

When we come back, how grudges and forgiveness affect our bodies and our minds. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, Inc. affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quince. We all have those pieces in our closet that we can count on— the versatile jacket, the perfect t-shirt. These are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials in designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperatures start to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on these everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable all season long. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Hidden Brain. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Psychologist Charlotte Whitfield studies the barriers, pathways, and effects of forgiveness. Many of us find that giving up hurts can be painful. We sometimes go to great lengths to nurture grudges and to keep the embers of our anger glowing. Grudges can consume our minds. But increasingly, researchers are also discovering that they can have measurable effects on our bodies. Charlotte has brought volunteers into the lab and asked them to ruminate on harms done to them. The results are striking.

When we ask people to come into the lab and relive these real-life hurts that they've experienced, it allows us to see how their bodies react. And we have examined their cardiovascular responses by looking at their heart rate and their blood pressure. We've also looked at a measure called heart rate variability, which is an index of the parasympathetic or the calming regulatory mechanisms that connect the brain and the heart. And another thing that we've looked at is sweat, as well as different facial muscles that are important for emotion.

And what do you find happens to people's heart rates and blood pressure and their facial muscles and their sweating? What happens when they ruminate on past hurts and grudges?

When people come into the lab, And they are ruminating about real-life hurts, their heart rates escalate, their blood pressure surges, and there's an important measure of the regulation of the heart that plummets when people are ruminating. At the same time, their faces are showing furrowing of the brow as well as tension underneath the eye.

All of us in some ways sort of have experienced what you're just describing. We might not have observed these markers as carefully, but all of us, I think, can remember times when we are lying in bed at night, maybe 1 o'clock in the morning, 2 o'clock in the morning, and we remember something hurtful that's happened. We experienced a stress response in some ways to the memories of past hurt.

Yes. Have you ever had it where even your chest hurt?

Mm-hmm.

You had that sinking feeling. Sometimes that corresponds to this decrease in vagal tone, which makes it harder to be flexibly toggling out of that ruminative mode.

So you do these studies that measure, in some ways, the effects of rumination on past hurts. But then you also ask some people in these experiments to try and exercise forgiveness. What are the instructions you give them to accomplish this, and what do you What do you find? What do your measures show?

One of the prompts that we've used in a lot of our studies is meant to invite a compassionate way of reappraising their response to the offender. So we ask people to remember that this person who offended them is a human being and to focus on the humanity of this person. We also ask them to think about the wrongdoing as evidence that things aren't right, that the person needs to experience some sort of learning or growth or change or transformation, and that they're in a unique position to be able to see some way in which that person may need to be able to grow or improve, and then find even a small way to genuinely wish that person well towards that And when you ask people to do this, do you also continue to measure their physiological markers, the ones that you talked about before?

Yes.

And what do you find?

Physiologically, their bodies are showing less of a stress response. So their heart rate doesn't escalate as much. Their blood pressure doesn't escalate as much. Their sweat levels are closer to baseline. Their heart rate variability is more like the relaxation baseline condition. So even though they're still thinking about that same offender and the specific offense that is hurtful, they are able to maintain more of a regulated, calm, sort of embodied response.

So someone who listens to this and says, all right, you know, I want to tweak my heart rate and blood pressure and parasympathetic nervous system and get those things working in a way that's good for me. And okay, what Charlotte Whitfield is telling me is that if I forgive, I get all of these physical benefits. You have, however, argued that some of these benefits might be better understood as side effects of forgiveness rather than the real effects of forgiveness. Why do you say that?

The reason I use the language of side effects is because I think it can help us Keep in view that forgiveness is a moral response to a relational breach. It's about meaning and relational injustice and healing. And at the same time, because it's humans who are engaging the response, it means that psychology, the cognition, the—

Emotion.

Emotion, the behavior, and the physiology is all part of that. But I think that there are other things we could do to simply get lower heart rate or blood pressure or calm cardiovascular systems that have nothing to do with the offense at all that wouldn't necessarily bring about forgiveness.

So there's some irony here because I I think what I hear you saying is that when we try and exercise forgiveness because we're trying to obtain some kind of mental or physical benefit, not only is that not potentially real forgiveness, but perhaps we don't even get the full mental and physiological benefits of forgiveness.

There's some interesting research that if you ask people to try to simply distract themselves rather than trying to reappraise it in a forgiving way, for example, that later on when they're prompted to relive the offense, it's the people who tried to reappraise it in a forgiving way that experienced the blood pressure changes in an enduring way, whereas the people who merely distracted themselves and had a blood pressure benefit in the short term didn't hold onto that. Because there wasn't real engagement with the relational injustice and that moral response.

How useful do you think short-term lab experiments that measure physical markers— how useful do you think they are in telling us about the effects of forgiveness in the real world where both harms can sometimes unfold over years, but also forgiveness can sometimes unfold over years or even decades?

I think lab experiments have their place, but we shouldn't overstate them either. So what they allow us to do is examine a thin slice and to determine with specificity the nature of the different kinds of physiological responses that happen and how long it takes for a particular reappraisal or rumination condition to have its effect. It's so important to make sure that There is research that examines what it's like to see these responses unfurl over longer durations, that follows people over longitudinal designs or even more dyadic sort of interactions.

You've sometimes talked about forgiveness not as a decision, but as a process. And you've sometimes drawn an analogy between forgiveness and our response to grief. Can you talk about that, the fact that forgiveness might not be sort of a binary, Yes/no answer, but much more of a process.

Forgiveness, so much like grief, is an unfolding journey. We have experienced deep hurt because of a loss. And so our emotions, as we process this loss, unfold over time. And we may adopt a different mindset about it and experience a sense that We are moving forward in our meaning-making, in our absorption of the reality of it, in our reckoning with it, and in our capacity to tolerate distress around it, and perhaps even in our sense of hope. And then we can have memories arise and setbacks occur in terms of how we, we feel. And so it's not like this neat linear process where you do step A and then B and then C, and then you're done. This journey has its own twists and turns, and there can be surprises. There can be times of incredible effortful intentionality that feel almost fruitless. But there are other times where that persistence can all of a sudden be met with like an aha revelation, a gift. But those emotions can't just be sort of unfurled at will.

To put this another way, you can decide to forgive someone, but your heart might not go along with your head.

The choice to forgive can be made in an instant, but the experience of what it means to forgive There are 2 types of forgiveness that are sometimes discussed, and this comes out of the work of Everett Worthington. Decisional forgiveness is this very cognitive sort of intention and commitment to respond in a way that might align with one's value system, to sort of do the right thing, as it were, in forgiving. And there's also emotional forgiveness, which involves some sort of a release of the tension a change of heart where more positive and generous kinds of responses to another human supplant the hurt and bitter kinds of responses that are otherwise there with unforgiveness. In the work that we're doing, we're actually asking people to try on these different mindsets So they can try this conscious, effortful way of thinking through things. What we find is that that too has at least a short-term reliable effect on shifting people's emotions, not only de-escalating the negative intensity, but also generating positive, other-oriented responses.

Charlotte says our ability to demonstrate positive and generous responses to another person, to empathize with them, this is critical to our ability to forgive. And empathy seems to come more easily to some of us than to others. Charlotte and her colleagues have tried to unravel why that is. They've studied the effects of genes, and they've also looked at gender differences in terms of empathy and forgiveness.

Empathy plays such a central role in forgiveness. Women self-report higher perspective-taking and empathic concern than men do. What we've found in our research is that empathy is the connector. It's the mediator between gender and the disposition of forgivingness in general, as well as The extent to which people express forgiveness toward a real-life offender while they're reliving that hurt. We also did some genetics research looking at a particular genetic variation that is associated with empathy and sociality. So the oxytocin receptor gene single nucleotide polymorphism, RS-53576 was the predictor. So empathy is the hub of the genetics and forgiveness relationship.

We've talked at some length, Charlotte, about the effects that forgiveness can have on us. And I want to spend a moment just talking about the effects that forgiveness can have on other people, including people who have transgressed against us. Some years ago, the social psychologist Roy Baumeister conducted a study that found that people were less likely to repeat offenses if they had been forgiven for an earlier offense. What do you make of a study like that? Why do you think you would see an effect like that?

Gratitude. When we receive a gift like that, we're grateful for it, and to the extent that people feel Appreciative of receiving forgiveness, and to the extent that they sense their own accountability for what they have done, and they realize the gift that someone's giving them when they're forgiven, they may have a stronger sense of commitment to not enact that sort of harm again. However, It's also the case that when people who have disagreeable personalities receive forgiveness, unfortunately, they sometimes are reinforced. They're almost emboldened, and they have a sense that they can get away with things. So I think that can go in 2 different ways.

I'm wondering, Charlotte, as somebody who is, besides a researcher and a clinical expert, somebody who's also a human being who goes through life, have there been times in your life when you have experienced hurts that you find difficult to set aside or forget?

Oh, yes, I have. And what's so interesting to me is that sometimes it's hard to not ruminate, even about small things. But more often for me, Rumination has been a struggle for the really, really deep losses and wounds, ones that are related to the suffering and death of people I love dearly. You know, the, the hurts that are the hardest for me are the ones where it's so clear to me what the wrongdoing is. And the consequences are so enormous, and there's no undoing them.

In some ways, I think, Charlotte, you're pointing to something that a lot of people experience, which is sometimes we are called to exercise forgiveness when a transgressor has not acknowledged the harm they have done to us. So in some ways, you don't have the satisfaction of having achieved justice. And what I hear you saying is that these are the things that you have struggled with, where in these situations, you have asked yourself, am I still capable of trying to exercise forgiveness when, in fact, there has been incomplete accountability and perhaps never will be complete accountability?

Yes, it is definitely the hardest when an injustice is deeply painful and so clearly wrong, and yet goes unrecognized by the person who bears responsibility, especially, you know, when it's not just sort of a mere matter of opinion or perspective or personal preference for how something is done, but it's an undeniable sort of offense where There's no apology on the horizon. There's no indication of regard at all. That's the hardest because it feels so dehumanizing, feels so unacknowledged, and in some ways then so unspeakable. Those are really, really hard situations. That's where having a very long view And a view of justice that transcends what any one of us is capable of in this world can be very important. That to the extent that there's a sense of ultimate trust, for example, in a God who cares about justice and transformation and mercy, Mm-hmm.

that can be incredibly Now, your father was a pastor, and I understand that you yourself are also deeply religious. And I'm wondering, has that informed the way that you're thinking about forgiveness? Because I hear very much, as you just said, it may be that in the here and now, there's not a neat equation that basically says, I'm going to give you X amount of forgiveness in return for Y amount of accountability. It may be that one of those is actually not in the here and now, but in the hereafter, at least as you see it.

You're right, my father was a pastor who was present with people in the best of times and also the worst of times, the horrific sorts of traumatic times, the betrayals, offering care. And so I think I became very aware about the kinds of suffering that so very many people experience, and yet it's so rare That apologies and repentant change and accountability are fully embodied in convincing and complete sorts of ways here and now. So, yes, I've been shaped by that and certainly have been shaped by a gospel that takes very seriously injustice and the cause of the oppressed and the importance of having justice and mercy meet in a God who took on the fullness of pain and suffering and is the one through whom all of that will be transformed, where every tool that is a weapon of harm will be transformed into a tool of cultivation.

110 Calhoun Street, Emmanuel AME Church. On June 17th, 2015, A white supremacist walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. What happened next shocked the nation, and a warning that it remains shocking years later. The man had a gun, and he used it to murder 9 Black people inside the church.

People inside were gathered for Bible study. These people were in church.

They were in church.

And they violated the sanctity of that. Investigators are calling the shooting a hate crime.

The only reason someone could walk into church and shoot people praying is out of hate. The only reason. The shooter was later convicted on federal hate crime charges and sentenced to death. Here's what the sister of one of the victims had to say to him.

For me, I'm a work in progress, and I acknowledge that I am very angry. But one thing that the pain has always joined in, in our family with, is that she taught me that we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate, so we have to forgive. And I pray God on your soul.

What goes through your mind as you hear this, Charlotte?

I hear such profound faith, such profound commitment to a life and an intergenerational community at Mother Emanuel that lives a gospel of grace and forgiveness, and that acknowledges the horror and the injustice Of the horrific murders. And that is so able to tell the full truth that this particular clip, this woman can speak to her grief, her anger, to the wrongness of the injustice. And can also— can also say that there is no room for hate.

That—

seeks to destroy, but rather seeks to transform it with grace. Amazing grace, amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

I want to talk for a moment, Charlotte, about not just interpersonal harms and interpersonal forgiveness. But harms that take place at the level of groups, perhaps even historical harms, and our capacity to forgive entire groups or the demands that are placed on some groups to forgive other groups. Does the research say anything at all about the value of doing so, the challenges of doing so, and the benefits of doing so?

What strikes me first is to hear the experience of people who have experienced profound injustice, and to honor those stories and the layers of harm and the implications of those, and to in no way excuse, ignore, or distract ourselves from that, but to be able to see the fullness of the wrong. And That condemnation alone may not bring about the change that people seek. So it's an invitation to accountability. And my first thought is how important it is for us to focus on the need to repent. That is, to recognize the places where we are The complicit ones, or we are the bystanders. Part of this field of forgiveness research examines what it means to reckon with our own wrongdoing and our own participation in systemic wrongs, and to enact the kind of change that halts the harm, creates safety and fairness, because we actually need To also engage in the kind of change that's required for our victims to receive the good change that they seek. And that is good for us too.

When we come back, when forgiveness to you feels like betrayal to me. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Stripe. Stripe is built for whatever comes next, because as your business scales, so does the complexity of fraud. New customers, new markets, new AI-driven attack patterns. Stripe Radar protects your business as it scales with the scale of the Stripe network. The more payments Stripe sees, the smarter its AI gets at detecting these patterns as they emerge. Stripe's network is so vast, it has seen $1.9 trillion in payment volume across millions of global businesses. In fact, when a card is used, there's a 92% chance the Stripe network has seen it before. All of this means fraudulent patterns across payments, accounts, and customer abuse can be detected, flagged, or blocked more easily, based on the rules you set up, of course. Blocking bad actors, welcoming good customers, keeping more of your revenue your revenue. Learn more about fighting fraud with Stripe at stripe.com/fraud. Support for Hidden Brain comes from US Bank. With a US Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. No quarterly activations, no categories to track, just unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, Pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply.

Comcast Business is now offering advanced big business cybersecurity for small businesses with an AI-powered firewall built right into your network connection.

Switch to Comcast Business and get started for just $50 a month for 1 year on a qualifying internet package with 1 month of Security Edge Preferred on us. Plus, for a limited time, ask about a $500 prepaid card. Call today. Limited time offer. Restrictions apply. New customers only. Requires 300 megabits per second internet, Security Edge, Security Edge Preferred, and Wireless Connect. 1-year agreement, paperless billing, and automatic payments required. Equipment, taxes, and fees extra. After promo, regular rates apply.

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. How long do you carry around your grudges and wounds? Do you nurture them, grow them, tend to them? What effect does this have on you? At Hope College in Michigan, Psychologist Charlotte Whitfleet studies the psychological barriers to forgiveness and the consequences of letting go of our hurts. Charlotte, I want to play you a clip. This is from the writer Amber Sparks discussing her book, And I Do Not Forgive You. That's the title of the book.

She is referring here in this discussion to the MeToo movement and the harms inflicted on women It was important to me to sort of write an anti-redemption story because we have this idea about narrative in our society where there's somebody and they do something bad to someone else and eventually they're forgiven and everybody learns something and then we can tie a bow on it. It isn't that great. And I felt like with what's happening right now, you know, with MeToo, there are people who don't deserve redemption.

Right.

Or at least, It's not owed to you as a victim to give somebody that gift, especially after like a freaking year or 2 or whatever, which some of these guys are asking for. So it was important to me to sort of write a counter-narrative that included the idea that the person doesn't have to grant forgiveness, and that not only can that be okay, but that can actually be transformative.

I'm wondering, in the course of the MeToo movement, there have been cases where people have said the people who have Harassed women have lost their jobs or they've suffered in some way. They've been punished enough. They should be forgiven and we should move on. And I'm wondering both as a researcher who studies forgiveness and as a woman, how you hear that kind of conversation. How does that strike you?

I think there's something about empathizing primarily with the wrongdoer at the expense of the victim That is so problematic, and that telling the truth about what has happened needs to place at the center the concerns of the person who has been most violated, most unjustly treated, the group that has been most hurt or unjustly treated. But it is an additional injustice to quickly rush to say, oh, I'm so moved by that powerful display of repentance, and then forget that true repentance involves accountable change and the welcoming of being accountable. So I think we need to be looking for that. We need to be looking for, are the people who are being held accountable owning their own need for undergoing change? That's genuine, and that's responsive.

I want to draw your attention to something that Amber Sparks said in that clip, because at least emotionally, I feel like it rings true. It seems to me that sometimes not forgiving can feel empowering.

Not forgiving can feel empowering because it can be an agentic choice, in contrast to being put in a position that you didn't have any choice about. One thing that we found in my very first study of forgiveness, comparing rumination about a hurt to grudge-holding, was that when nursing a grudge against a real-life offender, people felt more control. They felt less sad. They felt less afraid. They felt more positive. At the same time, it's also true That the ones that remembered the humanity of the offender and that engaged a forgiving response, those empathic and forgiving responses were even more full of perceived control and positivity, with less anger and less sadness. And that's where the embodied stress responses were quieted down the most.

I'm thinking about our capacity for anger and our capacity for forgiveness in terms of our evolutionary history. And I want to run an idea by you. It seems to me that if forgiveness was always in our interest or in the interest of our groups, we wouldn't find it so hard to do. You know, our brains would find it easier to forget grudges if, in fact, forgetting grudges was, you know, was good for us, or at least evolutionarily, if it had been good for our ancestors. I'm wondering if it's possible that the story of forgiveness, is it possible that it's missing out on the power that retribution and vengeance have to generate good behavior? In other words, if I thought you were certain to forgive me no matter what I did, so long as I'm appropriately contrite afterwards, isn't that an invitation for me to take advantage of you?

You are right in Mike McCullough's area. Groups try to uphold their social norms in lots of different ways, and punishment is one way. Sometimes retaliation, sometimes avoidance or ostracism is enacted as a way of not only addressing the harm directly or the wrongdoer directly, but also sending a powerful signal about what the rules are. So everybody observing is pretty clear on what it means to be in this group. And, you know, Mike McCullough's work also identifies a place for forgiveness and conciliatory responses for the good of the group and the survival of it.

I mean, this is the paradox, isn't it? Which is that A group that basically has no memory of past wrongs and ignores those past wrongs or is too quick to forgive is a group that's going to get taken advantage of. But a group that cannot forget past wrongs or cannot get beyond the pain of wrongs that have been done to them is not a group that can move forward. In some ways, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's really the path, the middle path that you suggested where you're both aware of the harms that were done, And you're exercising empathy for the people who've harmed you. I mean, that does seem to be the middle path between these 2 extremes.

I think you're right. It's so crucial to be able to engage in the both/and of truth-telling and accountability. So we need to reckon with wrongs. We need to resist minimizing them or excusing or ignoring or simply distracting ourselves from them because that can reward bad behavior, especially by disagreeable personalities who feel emboldened by that. And at the same time, when vindication is pursued predominantly through vindictiveness, that is a very destructive pattern too. And so if a group wants to move forward, or if a person wants to move forward, They have to be sure that they can see that humanity and that they can see the kind of corrective change that needs to be enacted so that those past wrongs don't simply get perpetuated into the future.

You've talked, Charlotte, about how in some ways when it comes to forgiving other people, it's this balance between seeking accountability and exercising empathy. How does this balance play out when it comes to forgiving ourselves for things that we have said or done?

One thing that's really powerful is how important it is to humbly reckon with our own capacity for wrongdoing and to address the reality of hurts that we have caused others by behaving in ways that are unfair or unjust. But at the same time, to be understanding and patient with ourselves, even as we are persistent and intentional in trying to do the right thing in our relationship with others.

Hmm.

It's just so crucial to have the accountability piece there, though, because otherwise I think we can slip into sort of a cheap grace that so readily, you know, sees all the reasons why we should be excused of the things we've done, but finds it so hard to extend mercy to others. So it's a complicated thing to get the right mix.

I want to play you a clip from the movie Pay It Forward. Helen Hunt's character is a single mother and a recovering alcoholic, and she's speaking to her mother about being traumatized during her childhood. Take a listen to the clip.

I want to try to do something. All the things when I was a kid, the booze and the men, what happened to me when you weren't looking. I know we're all weak.

Not you.

No, I've been weak. Well, here's the thing.

I forgive you.

I want to speak a moment, Charlotte, about Why many of us find these moments moving, even when we are not involved, when we are not the protagonists. Why is it that we find the granting of forgiveness to be beautiful?

It's so striking. When we have a sense that someone has seen it, they can tell the truth about it, and they have suffered, there's just a very, very powerful awareness of The reaching across that injustice gap to extend some sort of kindness, a mercy to someone, that takes our breath away. It is remarkable when we witness these profound, generous gifts of forgiveness And I think it inspires hope for us too. I am borrowing this from Everett Worthington, but, you know, he is quick to say, and I join with this perspective, that forgiving is about giving. But in giving, there's receiving too.

Charlotte Whitfield is a psychologist at Hope College in Michigan. Charlotte, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much for having me on Hidden Brain. It's a joy.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Laura Querelle, Kristin Wong, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Our unsung hero today is Turner Canty. Turner is a freelance producer who's been helping us with an audio project that was on our to-do list for months. It was one of those projects that required attention to detail and patience, both of which Turner brought to his work in abundance. We're really grateful for your help, Turner, and wish you the best of luck As you get ready to begin graduate school. If you like this episode, please be sure to share it with 3 friends. If they are new to podcasting, please show them how to subscribe to our show. Next week, why it's so hard to apologize or to admit when we've hurt someone. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you next week.

What's up, sports fans? I'm Rachel Domita, here to tell you about my show Courtside Club. If you love hoops, And hot takes, then you're in the right place. Want to hear about Caitlin Clark's unstoppable rise in the WNBA? How stars like Wemby and Luka Dončić are dominating the NBA? Or maybe you just want the tea on this week's most viral sports moments. Don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of it. So grab your popcorn and come hang with us courtside. You can listen to Courtside Club wherever you get your podcasts. Oui and ah.

Hi, it's me, your gutters. Everything is totally fine. There's just a lot of debris up here, and I've been managing it mostly on my own. I just thought you could find someone on Angie to clean me up. I could really use it.

Your gutters have waited long enough. Find a pro at angie.com.

You wouldn't take financial advice from a 72 hours in a single day alpha influencer, would you? Same goes if you're in a car accident or any accident. Who you choose matters. That's why Morgan& Morgan exists. They're the largest injury law firm in America, and they've built a reputation by actually winning cases, not just talking about it. Over 1,000 lawyers across all 50 states and $30 billion recovered. Injured? Go to forthepeople.com/podcast. That's forthepeople.com/podcast.

The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with 3 layers of protection. 1, smart AI cameras and live U.S.-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. 2, we sound the alarm at points of entry. 3, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/SXM. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.