200 Friendship and Conflict
had not targeted them in this fashion. Additionally, among the subsample of par-
ticipants who self- identified as avengees, individuals believed that they deserved to
pay for the harm they had caused their partners and viewed the act of revenge as
having satisfied their avenging partner’s goals to a greater extent the more highly
committed they were to these partners. These findings suggest that, when individu-
als in low commitment relationships believe that their partners have targeted them
for revenge, they may be quicker than those in high commitment relationships to
construe their partners’ actions as undeserved, vindictive, and unlikely to succeed
in achieving the partners’ goals.
Characteristics of the Transgression/ Provocation
Finally, understanding when people will consider forgiveness a viable option in the
face of a friend’s bad behavior and when they might instead be inclined to repay
harm with harm will likely require detailed consideration of features of the act or
event that precipitated feelings of injustice or upset to begin with. The literatures
on forgiveness and revenge offer some insights into the kinds of characteristics that
might be worthy of examination in this context. Regardless of the specific form they
take, provocations/ transgressions vary along a number of dimensions— including
severity/ intensity, the degree to which they reflect intent to harm, and capacity to
communicate symbolic meaning.
Severity of Harm
With respect to severity, the general finding is that blame increases and willingness
to forgive decreases as offense severity increases (Boon & Sulsky, 1997; Fehr et al.,
2010). We posit that forgiveness might be least likely and revenge most likely when
a friend’s wrongful act is deemed “unforgivable.” Research clearly suggests that there
are limits to what people consider it possible to forgive (Macaskill, 2005; Rapske
et al., 2010), with very severe transgressions/ provocations such as murder, sexual
assault, and sexual abuse emerging in previous research as prototypes of unforgivable
offenses. Because most friendships never encounter such extreme transgressions/
provocations, however, it is important to note that lay conceptions of the sorts of
offenses that are not forgivable appear to extend well beyond these exemplars (e.g.,
Rapske et al., 2010). Research suggests, for example, that many individuals consider
sexual infidelity an unforgivable betrayal (Rapske et al., 2010). This finding serves as
a reminder that perspective and construal matter: The threshold for perceiving an act
as sufficiently severe as to eliminate possibilities for forgiving a friend who engages in
such an act may vary across individuals, situations, and occasions.
The importance of perspective and construal is echoed in the literature on
revenge. For example, Stillwell, Baumeister, and Del Priore (2008) argue that