Do victims and people who caused harm need different things to become willing to reconcile?

Details

The authors propose that conflict threatens different psychological resources on each side. Being a victim can threaten a person’s status and sense of power, whereas causing harm can threaten their image as moral and socially acceptable.

Their model predicts that an exchange between the parties that restores victims’ sense of power and restores perpetrators’ public moral image should increase their willingness to reconcile. The authors report that four studies of interpersonal reconciliation supported these hypotheses.

The abstract does not describe the procedures or specific comparisons, so it is not possible to tell exactly how the model was tested or how large the effects were. The reported support concerns willingness to reconcile; the abstract does not establish that actual reconciliation or lasting relationship changes followed.