• DOI:10.1080/17439760903509614
• Corpus ID: 144005845

Beyond revenge: the evolution of the forgiveness instinct, by Michael McCullough

@article{Hogan2010BeyondRT,
  title={Beyond revenge: the evolution of the forgiveness instinct, by Michael McCullough},
  author={Michael J. Hogan},
  journal={The Journal of Positive Psychology},
  year={2010},
  volume={5},
  pages={100 - 97}
}

• M. Hogan
• Published 1 January 2010
• Psychology
• The Journal of Positive Psychology

For those familiar with Aristotle’s Golden Mean, the Buddhist Middle Way, or Bertalanffy’s principle of dynamic equilibrium, the emergence of a new synthesis of positive and negative psychology will be no surprise. A more balanced approach to scientific analysis of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ in human nature is now emerging, and few researchers approach this balanced approach to analysis better than does Michael McCullough in his book, Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. McCullough begins by placing side-by-side two classics texts: Frans de Waal’s book, Good Natured, and Wrangham and Peterson’s book, Demonic Males. An obvious and yet striking contrast emerges. Ape society includes highly moral behaviors: setting and enforcing rules that benefit the group, sharing with the needy, sympathizing with those that suffer, offering consolation to the vanquished, and returning favors to the generous. Nevertheless, coalitional bonds between males within the ape community often serve to fuel an attack-on-sight ethic toward individuals from other communities, and McCullough reminds us that this tendency to maintain one set of rules for kith and kin, and a very different set of rules for outsiders is similarly prominent in human societies. More generally, McCullough argues that revenge is not a disease and forgiveness the cure: both revenge and forgiveness are aspects of human nature, instinctual patterns of behavior that are context sensitive, and if we want to make the world a less vengeful, more forgiving place we need to make social environments less abundant in the factors that evoke the desire for revenge and more abundant in the factors that evoke the forgiveness instinct. Broadly speaking, when it comes to thinking about behavioral change, there is an important difference between Michael McCullough and those who emphasize self-determination (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Specifically, rather than talk about forgiveness as a strength of character that mediates the relationship between the environment and behavioral outcomes (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), McCullough highlights the key role the environment plays in shaping (or evoking) evolutionarily stable behavioral strategies. ‘Human nature is what it is . . . it’s pretty well locked in. But there’s a hopeful paradox waiting in the wings: our fixed, evolutionarily shaped, genetically superintended human nature is flexible, multifarious, and exquisitely sensitive to context . . .Helping humans adapt to the contingencies that present themselves is one of the things that human nature is for. Change those contingencies in one way, and more revenge results. Change them in another way, and more forgiveness results. So if you master the contingencies governing the human desire for revenge and the human propensity to forgive, then you can go back to your home, your school, your workplace, or your community and make it a less vengeful, more forgiving place’ (p. xix). Aside from his strong emphasis on evolved instincts, McCullough’s general approach to behavioral change would be more acceptable to advocates of functional contextualism than is the approach to behavior change emphasized in self-determination theory (Chiesa, 1994). Functional contextualists search for variables that predict a particular event and would, if manipulated, affect the probability or prevalence of the event. Analyses that allow only for the prediction of behavior, or analyses that rely on non-manipulable variables, are considered inadequate or incomplete. Consistent with McCullough’s view, any scientist seeking to influence levels of forgiveness would not only need to search for variables that predict forgiveness, but also isolate variables that when manipulated would influence the probability or prevalence of forgiveness (as operationally defined by the analyst). It will probably be no surprise to the average person that revenge and forgiveness are elicited by certain social conditions. For example, few of the boys I attended school with would likely be surprised to learn that reward/pleasure centers in the brain are activated in men (but not women) who observe a defector being punished, that is, someone who treated them unfairly in an economic game (Singer et al., 2006). Under certain conditions, boys and men may