IT seems, these days, that we can barely keep pace with the tales of the famous and near famous who climb to great heights, plummet to great depths and then try to work their way back into the public’s affection.
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A man in Los Angeles watched Lance Armstrong acknowledge his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Since the beginning of this year alone, we’ve had Lance Armstrong’s sort-of apology interview with Oprah Winfrey acknowledging his use of a variety of performance-enhancing drugs, the efforts by the fashion designer John Galliano to put an anti-Semitic tirade behind him and the seemingly ill-fated, public (and lucrative) mea culpa by the best-selling author Jonah Lehrer for plagiarism and fabrication.
Even as I was writing this column, news broke about another fallen celebrity: Oscar Pistorius, the South African double-amputee Olympic runner, was charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
These never-ending stories may not affect our lives — except, perhaps, to make us more cynical when the mighty fall. But they do raise questions about forgiveness and atonement that are important outside the world of the celebrity.
“Stories of trust violations abound in the media and business press,” Kurt T. Dirks, a professor of managerial leadership at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues wrote in a recent journal article. “However, these high-profile incidents are vastly outnumbered by the many trust violations that occur in the offices and hallways and other arenas of virtually all work organizations.”
And with our friends, partners, children, parents and, of course, the companies we do business with.
I’ve written quite a bit about the need for our society to be more open to mistakes and failure. But what happens after that? Is forgiveness automatic? And how difficult is it — or should it be — to get redemption after a serious misstep?
First, what is forgiveness? Jeffrie Murphy, a professor of law, philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University, who has written about the issue for years, says it is “a change of heart toward someone — overcoming the feelings of anger and resentment that typically come from being wronged by another.”
But it is important to differentiate between forgiveness and trusting someone again, Professor Dirks said. So you may be willing to forgive a business that messed up a deal but nevertheless decide not to work with that business again. Or forgive an abusive partner, but never be in a relationship with that person again. Or even forgive those who committed a crime against you, but still believe they should be punished.
“The question is how much you’ve been personally harmed and what’s at stake for you in the future,” he said. “It depends, also, if we have something to gain by interacting” with the person or business again.
Of course, it is often easier to avoid interacting with a person who has harmed you than a business, because often no good alternatives are available.
But we can feel that we have some control by refusing to buy from a company that has sold us a lemon or provided terrible service. And, on occasion, enough consumers have pulled together to force a company to back down, as they did in 2011, when Bank of America bowed to customer pressure and dropped plans to impose a $5 monthly fee on debit cards.
Research has also shown that we seem to be more willing to forgive — and trust again — those who make errors of competence rather than of character, Professor Dirks said.
“We believe issues of competence are changeable over time, but not issues of character or integrity,” he said. “And the truth is that probably you can change certain skills, but the underlying value system is probably harder to change.”
It has become somewhat common wisdom to believe that forgiving a person who did you wrong is not just the right thing to do, but will make you emotionally, and even physically, healthier in the long run by alleviating the anger and stress you feel.
But Professor Murphy warned against assuming that forgiveness was always the right answer and that someone who failed to offer forgiveness was “not a good person or a mentally healthy person.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 22, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a professor at Arizona State University. He is Jeffrie Murphy, not Jefffrie.
Shortcuts: Why It’s Not Always Good to Forgive
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