A Tale of Two Tweets

What Factors Predict Forgiveness of Past Transgressions on Social Media

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21453531
AutoresAndrew J Dawson (0000-0001-9131-3835, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, autor de correspondencia), 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)
Año2025
Volumen51
Número7
Páginas1259-1280
Fecha de publicación2025-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0146-1672 • E-ISSN: 1552-7433
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01461672231214629
PMID38084428
OpenAlexW4389618490
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas61

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