The Application of Forgiveness in a Social System Design

Related comments: Jill's blog.


Summary:
In this paper, Asimina Vasalou, Jens Riegelsberger and Adam Joinson (a joint research team from the University of Bath and Google UK) lay out a framework for designing "reparative social systems" by defining the process of forgiveness in social interaction.  They bring light especially on the case of the online user who may offend unintentionally or accidentally; reparative systems may more easily allow trust to be re-established and the user returned to good standing in the online community.  They define forgiveness as "the victim's prosocial change towards the offender as s/he replaces these initial negative motivations with positive motivations."  These positive motivations can be influenced by a number of factors: offense severity, intent, apology, reparative actions taken, non-verbal expressions, dyadic history (previously rewarding interactions between two users), and history in the community.  Victims will assess all of the above factors when deciding whether to forgive the offender.  They expound further on the definition of forgiveness in the following ways:

• Forgiveness cannot be mandatory (it does not follow automatically after an offender's penance)
• Forgiveness is not unconditional (rather, it follows the offender's acknowledgement of responsibility and amends)
• Forgiveness does not necessarily repair trust or remove accountability

Forgiveness has its benefits -- offenders can relieve guilt or shame through apology or reparative action, victims may reduce or release their anger toward the offender, and it can empower an online community to learn by example and move toward self-moderation.  


From the definitions presented, the researchers arrived at the following provisions for reparative design in social systems:

• Respect the dyadic nature of forgiveness (overcome the asynchronous nature of online forum communication by notifying offenders and providing a grace period for response)
• Support the motivating factors of forgiveness (provide systems that allow the victim and community to measure an offender's previous and current actions, intent, apology, etc. and gives the offender tools to provide an adequate apology)
• Increase public awareness (make the offense public to educate the community)
• Build flexibility within and around forgiveness (allow victims to retract decisions of trust and accountability if desired)
• Design interventions to lower attributions (assess an offender's previous history to prevent victims from jumping to conclusions about an offender's motivation)

Discussion:
The research presented in this paper certainly gives a thorough definition of forgiveness as well as methods of enacting it; the problem with putting such systems in place in an online community is that the selection of communities willing to self-moderate and enact these kind of reparative systems are probably few and far between.  The researchers mention "trolls" all too briefly at the beginning of the paper and don't seem to realize that a troll can simply create another account on a forum if s/he got banned for offensive or abusive conduct.  The systems they mention apply most directly to buyer/seller sites like Amazon, eBay or Craigslist where buyer/seller trust is paramount, and they do a good job of mentioning their system's applications in this respect.  However, they seem to view these systems as being more widely applicable than they really are.