A Tale of Two Tweets

What Factors Predict Forgiveness of Past Transgressions on Social Media

Bibliographic Data

ID21453531
AuthorsAndrew J Dawson (0000-0001-9131-3835, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, corresponding author), Sarah Williams (0000-0001-7968-1870, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada), Anne Wilson (0000-0001-7954-6038, Wilfrid Laurier University), Anne E Wilson (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)
Year2025
Volume51
Issue7
Pages1259-1280
Publication date2025-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0146-1672 • E-ISSN: 1552-7433
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01461672231214629
PMID38084428
OpenAlexW4389618490
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited61

As more of our lives take place online, it is increasingly common for public figures to have their current image tarnished by their mistakes and transgressions in what is often the distant past. Three experiments ( N = 2,296) found that judgments of a public figure who tweeted racist statements in the past were less harsh when more time had passed and when the public figure was younger at the time of the tweet. However, politics also played a powerful role. Independent of time and age, liberals allowed less possibility of redemption for anti-Black tweets, while conservatives were less forgiving for anti-White tweets. Such partisan differences extended not only to moral judgments of the individual, but also general moral principles and participants’ subjective perceptions of the situation itself, including subjective temporal distance from the tweet, the subjective age of the public figure, and the current relevance of the past statements

Forgiveness · Perception · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Relevance (law) · Social media · Social perception · White (mutation) · Forgiveness and Related Behaviors · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology