Intergroup Forgiveness: East Timorese and Angolan Perspectives
| Author | Etienne Mullet,Félix Neto,Maria Da Conceiçao Pinto |
| Published date | 01 November 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343307082067 |
| Date | 01 November 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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Introduction
The present study was aimed at analyzing the
viewpoint of two samples of participants, one
from East Timor and the other from Angola,
on intergroup forgiveness. The central ques-
tion that was examined was: Is intergroup
forgiveness a meaningful concept for the
victims of violent conflicts? In other words,
may a group of victims forgive a group of
violent offenders?
Participants in this study have been, for
the most part, personally affected by long-
term wars and conflicts. The people of East
Timor endured the invasion of their territory
and political domination by Indonesia for 25
years, as well as the destruction the militia and
Indonesian army caused when leaving the
country. Angola’s population was directly or
indirectly involved in the enduring civil war
that ravaged the country from 1975 to 2002.
© 2007 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 44, no. 6, 2007, pp. 711–728
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343307082067
Intergroup Forgiveness: East Timorese and
Angolan Perspectives*
FÉLIX NETO, MARÍA DA CONCEIÇÃO PINTO
Faculty of Psychology, University of Porto
ETIENNE MULLET
Institute for Advanced Studies (EPHE)
The present study is a survey on intergroup forgiveness conducted among people from East Timor and
Angola, most of whom have been personally touched by the various conflicts affecting their countries.
Only one of the two aspects of intergroup forgiveness was assessed: granting forgiveness. A sample of
354 East Timorese adults was presented with a questionnaire addressing the meaningfulness of inter-
group forgiveness and possible conceptions about granting intergroup forgiveness. Using exploratory
factor analysis, an eight-factor model was derived from the participants’ responses. Using confirmatory
factor analysis, this model was subsequently tested on a sample of 250 Angolan adults. In both samples,
a large majority of participants agreed with the idea that a group of people can forgive another group
of people. Furthermore, the model derived from the East Timorese data also fitted the data from the
Angolan sample: in both samples, the participants appeared to have articulated conceptions on what
could define an intergroup granting of forgiveness. Specifically, a majority of participants agreed with
the idea that (a) the aim of this process is reconciliation and that intergroup forgiveness is not strictly
conditional on adequate reparation or compensation, and (b) this process must be democratic; in other
words, granting forgiveness should be decided by a majority, and only then could forgiveness be granted
on behalf of the whole community.
* Address correspondence to Etienne Mullet, Quefes 17
bis, FR-31830 Plaisance du Touch, France. E-mail:
etienne.mullet@wanadoo.fr. This work was supported by
POCTI/PSI/46245/2002, the Laboratory Ethics and
Work (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes), and the UMR
Work and Cognition. We are grateful to Paul C. Sorum and
Sheila Rivière for their thoughtful comments on an earlier
draft of this article. The data used in this article can be
found at http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.
Intergroup Forgiveness
In recent years, the concept of interpersonal
forgiving has received empirical attention from
cognitive, developmental, social, and clinical
psychologists. Social scientists have, increas-
ingly, examined the potential relevance of
interpersonal forgiving in human relationships
(Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000; McCullough,
Pargament & Thorensen, 2000; Worthington,
2005).
According to Enright & Fitzgibbons
(2000: 24), ‘People, upon rationally deter-
mining that they have been unfairly treated,
forgive when they willfully abandon resent-
ment and related responses (to which they
have a right), and endeavor to respond to the
wrongdoer based on the moral principle of
beneficence, which may include compassion,
unconditional worth, generosity, and moral
love (to which the wrongdoer, by nature
of the hurtful act or acts, has no right).’
Worthington, Berry & Parrott (2001:
108–109) defined interpersonal forgiveness
in relation to unforgiveness, which they
defined as a complex of related emotions
consisting of resentment, bitterness, hatred,
hostility, residual anger, and fear that are
experienced after ruminating about a trans-
gression. In their view, forgiveness is the con-
tamination or prevention of unforgiving
emotions by experiencing strong, positive,
love-based emotions as one recalls a trans-
gressor. These positive emotions are
empathy, sympathy, compassion, friendship,
and even romantic love for the transgressor.
Rye & Pargament (2002: 419–420) defined
interpersonal forgiveness as letting go of neg-
ative affects (e.g. hostility), negative cogni-
tion (e.g. thoughts of revenge), and negative
behavior (e.g. verbal aggression) in response
to considerable injustice, and also may
involve responding positively toward the
offender (e.g. compassion). One important
common point among the proposed defini-
tions is that interpersonal forgiveness is con-
ceived both as an interindividual process (e.g.
‘responding positively toward the offender’;
Rye & Pargament, 2002) and an intraindi-
vidual process (e.g. prevention of resentment,
bitterness, hatred, hostility; Worthington,
Berry & Parrott, 2001).
One can wonder whether forgiveness is a
relevant topic in political ethics. ‘At first
blush, forgiveness appears to be a rather soft-
headed, unrealistic way to respond to any-
thing political’ (Digeser, 1998: 700). This is
because forgiveness has long been conceived
by moral philosophers (Kant, 1960; Smedes,
1996) and then by social psychologists (see
the above definitions) as a process that can
involve only those people directly connected
with the offense, that is, the offender and the
offended. Moral philosophers have tended to
accept what Shriver (1995: 113) termed the
captivity of forgiveness to issues of individ-
ual, personal resentment, banishing from
legitimacy the notion of third-party guilt and
responsibility along with third-party forgive-
ness (see also Amstutz, 2004; Digeser, 2001;
and Henderson, 1996 for similar concep-
tions). As a result, the first attempts at study-
ing forgiveness in sociopolitical contexts
addressed only interpersonal forgiveness
(Azar, Mullet & Vinsonneau, 1999; Azar &
Mullet, 2001, 2002).
This conception of forgiveness as a strictly
interpersonal process does not take into
account the fact that (a) many, if not most,
major injuries in social life are collective ones
(Amstutz, 2004; Minow, 1998; Totten,
Parsons & Charny, 2004); (b) the responsi-
bilities for them are frequently shared by
many individuals (at the same time or at
different times); (c) the proper justice for
them is often unobtainable (Digeser, 2001);
(d) confession of them must, to be complete,
be a collective enterprise; and (e) the proper
cure for them can be undertaken only at a
community level.
In his analysis of apology and reconciliation,
Tavuchis (1991: 48) suggested three alternative
structural conceptualizations of apology and
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007
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