Mitigating the impact of negative emotions on retaliation responses to injustice: The spillover effect of state forgiveness

We investigated the spillover effect of state forgiveness from one instance of injustice on forgiving offenders in another instance. The sample comprised 210 undergraduates at a university in China, who completed an experiment concerning justice in evaluation for awarding scholarships. We assessed the mediating effect of both positive and negative emotions and the moderating effect of state forgiveness induced in advance on the relationship between justice perception and retaliatory tendencies. The results indicated that negative, rather than positive, emotions mediated the impact of justice perception on the propensity for retaliation. Although preemptive state forgiveness did not directly influence emotional responses to injustice, it significantly mitigated the impact of negative emotions on retaliatory tendencies. These findings underscore the efficacy of state forgiveness, when manipulated by being induced in advance, as an intervention for alleviating retaliatory responses to subsequent injustices, particularly in scenarios where offenders are unlikely to apologize.