Cognition and Emotion

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The link between Empathy and Forgiveness:
Replication and extensions Registered Report of
McCullough et al. (1997)'s Study 1
Chi Fung Chan & Gilad Feldman
To cite this article: Chi Fung Chan & Gilad Feldman (2025) The link between Empathy and
Forgiveness: Replication and extensions Registered Report of McCullough et al. (1997)'s Study
1, Cognition and Emotion, 39:6, 1227-1249, DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2434156
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COGNITION AND EMOTION
2025, VOL. 39, NO. 6, 1227–1249
https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2434156

The link between Empathy and Forgiveness: Replication and extensions
Registered Report of McCullough et al. (1997)’s Study 1
Chi Fung Chan

and Gilad Feldman

Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

McCullough et al. [McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L., & Rachal, K. C. (1997).
Interpersonal Forgiving in Close Relationships. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 73(2), 321–336.] demonstrated that in situations of feeling hurt by an
offender, empathy towards the offender is positively associated with forgiving the
offender, which in turn is positively associated with conciliatory behaviour and
negatively associated with avoidance behaviour. In a Replication Registered Report
with a Prolific US online sample (N = 794), we conducted a replication of Study 1
from McCullough et al. (1997) with extensions manipulating empathy to determine
causality and measuring revenge motivation adopted from McCullough et al.
[McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington, E. L., Brown, S. W., &
Hight, T. L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II. Theoretical
Elaboration and Measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(6),
1586–1603]. We found that empathy was positively associated with perceived
apology (r = 0.45[0.35,0.55]) and forgiveness toward the offender (r = 0.64
[0.56,0.70]), and forgiveness was positively associated with conciliatory motivation
(r = 0.51[0.41,0.59]) and negatively associated with avoidance motivation (r = −0.51
[−0.59,−0.42]) and revenge motivation (r = −0.43[−0.52,−0.33]). Manipulating
empathy, we found that participants who recalled situations in which they felt
strong empathy towards the offender rated higher forgiveness compared to
participants recalling situations with low empathy or compared to control (d =
0.60–0.62). Overall, this was a successful replication of the findings by McCullough
et al. (1997; 1998) with the empathy model of forgiveness receiving strong
empirical support. Materials, data and code are available on: https://osf.io/fmuv2/.
This Registered Report has been endorsed by Peer Community in Registered Reports:
https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100444.

Received 8 November 2023
Revised 25 June 2024
Accepted 18 July 2024
KEYWORDS

forgiveness; empathy;
motivational change;
registered report; replication

CONTACT Gilad Feldman
gfeldman@hku.hk
627 Jockey Club Tower, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2434156.
© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

1228

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

PCIRR-Study Design Table
Question

Hypothesis

Sampling plan

Analysis plan

Rationale for
Interpretation
Theory that could be
deciding the
given different
shown wrong by
sensitivity of the
outcomes
the outcomes
test for
confirming or
disconfirming the
hypothesis
Is empathy
The relationship between The current study Pearson
We followed
We examine the That apology,
associated
apology and forgiving
aimed to recruit correlation,
analyses in the
replicability of
forgiveness and
with
is largely mediated by
800
Betweenoriginal article
McCullough
empathy are
perceived
empathy.[Reframed as: participants,
subject ANOVA
and extended it
et al. (1997) and correlated. And
apology and Apology, forgiving and well-powered
(Extension),
to better address support for our that empathy
forgiveness? empathy are
enough to
Bootstrapping
the research
suggested
impacts apology
correlated. Empathy
detect effects
mediation
questions and
extensions.
and forgiveness
causally impacts
much weaker
(Exploratory)
report of results.
forgiveness and
than the
We conducted a
apology (extension)]
smallest effects
power analysis of
in the target.
the target’s
Is forgiveness Forgiving promotes
Pearson
Forgiving as a
See Power
reported effects,
associated
constructive actions
correlation
motivational
analysis section
and decided on
with
toward the offender
transformation
following the
behavioural
(i.e. conciliation) and
that inclines
sample size of the
motivations? inhibits destructive
people to inhibit
actions toward the
target’s (239),
relationshipoffender (i.e. avoidance
more than 2.5
destructive
and revenge) following
times of the
responses and to
required sample
an interpersonal
behave
offence
(94). Sensitivity
constructively
analysis indicated
toward someone
the ability to
who has behaved
detect
destructively
correlations of r
toward them
= 0.21 in the
control condition.
We added 2 more
conditions for the
extension,
resulting in an
overall sample of
717 (after
exclusions)
allowing the
detection of f =
0.15 (95% power,
alpha = 5%, onetail).
Alpha of 5%
followed the
target’s, and high
power of 95% is
on par and higher
than typical
replications in
PCIRR.

Background
Many theories and models have been suggested to
explain forgiveness and its social roots and implications
(e.g. Enright & Coyle, 1998; Strelan & Covic, 2006;
Worthington & Scherer, 2004). McCullough et al.
(1997)’s empathy model conceptualised forgiveness

as the motivation to inhibit relationship-destructive
responses and behave constructively toward an
offender. Their research demonstrated that (a) relation­
ship between receiving an apology from and forgiving
one’s offender is a function of increased empathy for

COGNITION AND EMOTION

1229

Figure 1. Empathy model of forgiveness reconstructed from McCullough et al. (1997).

the offender and (b) forgiving is uniquely related to
conciliatory behaviour and avoidance behaviour
toward the offending partner. Their empathy model
of forgiveness is summarised in Figure 1.
We report a close replication and extension Regis­
tered Report of McCullough et al. (1997) with two
main goals. Our first goal was to conduct an indepen­
dent close replication of the associations among
empathy, perceived apology, forgiving and various
behavioural motivations. Our second goal was to
extend the target article’s design to examine causality
by manipulating empathy attributions and incorpor­
ating avoidance motivation and revenge motivation
measures from a related follow-up study by McCul­
lough et al. (1998) (Study 1). Together, we aimed for
a broader, causal, more extensive view on the associ­
ations and impact of empathy.
We begin by introducing the literature on forgive­
ness and the chosen article for replication. We discuss
our motivation for the current replication study, the
hypotheses and study design, with our adjustments
and added extensions.

Interpersonal forgiveness
Despite different definitions across contexts and the­
ories, forgiveness is generally agreed by scholars to
be an intentional and voluntary process (or the
result of a process) that involves a change in
emotion and attitude regarding an offender, driven
by a deliberate decision to forgive (Enright & Fitzgib­
bons, 2000; Fincham et al., 2004; Worthington &
Scherer, 2004). This process usually leads to decreased
motivation to retaliate or maintain estrangement
from an offender, and requires setting free of negative
affects toward the offender (Macaskill, 2012; Webb &
Toussaint, 2019).

Field et al. (2013) generalised forgiveness into four
major components: Self-awareness, letting go, perspec­
tive-taking and moving on. Whether an apology and
reconciliation are necessary for forgiveness remains con­
troversial among theorists (Fincham et al., 2004; Kelley
et al., 2018; Strabbing, 2020). The main arguments
against their necessity include the inapplicability of
relationship restorations to self-forgiveness (Hall &
Fincham, 2005) and the impossibility of receiving an
apology from those who have passed away (Breitbart,
2018; Gassin & Lengel, 2014), and yet forgiveness is gen­
erally believed as sensible in both situations. Putting
aside this unsolved debate, we mainly focus on McCul­
lough et al. (1997)’s interpersonal forgiveness in which
apology and reconciliation are possible.
The benefits of interpersonal forgiveness have been
widely studied, as – for example – forgiveness seems
crucial for psychological healing in broken relationships
(Menahem & Love, 2013). Lee and Enright (2019)’s
meta-analysis indicated a positive association between
forgiveness and physical health (e.g. lowering blood
pressure and cortisol levels, improving the immune
system), and there is evidence in support of a positive
association with marital adjustment (Agu & Nwankwo,
2019; Fahimdanesh et al., 2020; McNulty, 2008),
quality of friendships (Boon et al., 2022) and familial
relationships (Gordon et al., 2009; Maio et al., 2008).

Empathy in forgiveness
McCullough et al. (1997) conceptualised empathy as a
crucial facilitative condition for overcoming the ten­
dency toward destructive responding following an
interpersonal offence, leading to forgiveness. Their
hypothesis was based on the facilitating effect of
empathy occurring in other prosocial phenomena,
such as in corporations, altruism and the inhibition

1230

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

of aggressions. (Batson et al., 1991; Eisenberg & Fabes,
1990; Hoffman, 1981; Moore, 1990; Tangney, 1991; as
cited in McCullough et al., 1997). More recent studies
also further supported this argument, showing a close
association between empathy and forgiveness, across
genders (Mellor et al., 2012; Miller et al., 2008), and
contributing to personal self-esteem (Turnage et al.,
2012; Yao et al., 2017).
Empathy can be treated as either an affect
(emotion) in response to stimuli or a dispositional
(personality) trait of a person. We followed the
target article to focus on the affective dimension of
empathy, unless mentioned otherwise.

Revenge, avoidance and conciliation
McCullough et al. (1997) suggested the primacy of the
behavioural tendencies toward revenge and avoidance
in response to interpersonal offence is motivated by
two key affective responses illustrated by Gottman’s
(1994) research on a close relationship: righteous indig­
nation (e.g. anger, contempt) and hurt-perceived
attack (e.g. internal whining, innocent victimhood).
This was largely endorsed by recent research on
revenge psychology (Jackson et al., 2019; McCullough
et al., 2013; Sjöström & Gollwitzer, 2015).
Based on Batson’s Empathy-Altruism hypothesis
(Batson et al., 1991; Batson & Charles, 2011), McCul­
lough et al. (1997) proposed the psychological simi­
larity between the relationship among empathy,
forgiving and resulting behavioural responses and
the sequence of events by which empathy leads to
the motivation to care for others (i.e. altruism) and
how that altruistic motivation can produce behavioural
outcomes (e.g. helping, allocating resources in a social
dilemma, cooperating). Therefore, McCullough et al.
(1997) suggested empathy may counteract the motiv­
ation of relationship-destructive response of revenge
and avoidance, in response to interpersonal offence,
promoting conciliation through forgiveness.

Choice of study for replication
We chose McCullough et al. (1997)’s study based on
two factors: impact, potential for further extensions
examining causality and revenge, and the absence
of direct replications.
The article has had an impact on scholarly research,
especially in the domains of social and clinical psy­
chology. At the time of writing (January 2023), there
were 2404 Google Scholar citations of the article

with important follow-up theoretical and empirical
articles, such as Thompson et al. (2005) on the dispo­
sitional dimension of forgiveness and Raes et al.
(2011) on the construction of the self-compassion
scale. The influential 2-component motivational
model of forgiveness proposed by McCullough et al.
(1998) was also an extension built on this initial
empathy model. The empathy-forgiveness link
demonstrated by McCullough et al. (1997)’s research
has been one of the most critical foundations of for­
giveness therapy which is nowadays widely adopted
in clinical settings (Akhtar & Barlow, 2018; Enright &
Fitzgibbons, 2015; Yu et al., 2021).
McCullough et al. (1997)’s study is considered one
of the first theoretical and empirical bases to explore
forgiveness, conceptualising forgiveness and its corre­
lated factors, providing a new framework to under­
stand forgiveness, transforming it from a sacred
virtue or a remote moral standard into an explainable
social phenomenon. This has led to further studies of
the implications of forgiveness aiming to aid the
public in improving social well-being and interperso­
nal relationships in their daily lives (Akhtar & Barlow,
2018; Worthington et al., 2007). McCullough et al.
(1997)’s research offered a scientific framework for for­
giveness intervention and psychotherapy. The
empathy-forgiving link was the theoretical foundation
for several psychological treatments and therapies for
a variety of life problems and mental illnesses in clini­
cal settings, ranging from spousal infidelity (Chi et al.,
2019) or bereavement (Záhorcová et al., 2021), to bor­
derline personality disorder (Sandage et al., 2015) or
post-traumatic stress disorder (Akhtar & Barlow,
2018; Currier et al., 2016).
The target article suggested what appears to be a
causal model (see Figure 1), and yet the methods
employed to test the mediation were based on corre­
lational designs. We saw potential in extending their
design with modifications aiming to establish the
causality of the impact of empathy on forgiveness.
To the best of our knowledge, there are currently
no published independent direct replications of this
article. McCullough et al. (1998) extended their
model by adding other variables such as commit­
ment, impact of the offence and rumination, into pre­
dicting forgiveness, which we aimed to further
integrate into our replication as an extension.
Donovan and Priester (2020) conducted a related con­
ceptual replication of the Model of Motivated Inter­
personal Forgiveness, with different measurements
and designs.

COGNITION AND EMOTION

Following the recent growing recognition of the
importance of reproducibility and replicability in psycho­
logical science (e.g. Brandt et al., 2014; Coles et al., 2018;
Field et al., 2019; Moshontz et al., 2018; Open Science
Collaboration, 2015; Nosek et al., 2022; Zwaan et al.,
2018), we aimed to revisit the classic Empathy Model
of Forgiveness with a well-powered close independent
replication Registered Report of McCullough et al.
(1997), integrating developments from McCullough
et al. (1998) and aiming to test causality.

Original hypotheses and findings in the target
article
McCullough et al. (1997) conceptualised interpersonal
forgiving as the set of motivational changes whereby
one becomes (a) less motivated to retaliate against an
offending relationship partner, (b) less motivated to
maintain estrangement from the offender and (c)
more motivated towards conciliation and goodwill
for the offender, despite the offender’s hurtful
actions. Affective empathy was conceptualised as a
crucial facilitative condition for overcoming the
primary tendency toward destructive responses fol­
lowing a significant interpersonal offence. On the
basis of these conceptual analyses, McCullough
et al. (1997) proposed three core hypotheses. We sum­
marised the hypotheses of the target article in Table 1.
We mainly focused on Study 1 of the target article,
examining the link between apology, forgiving and
empathy for offending partners and whether forgiv­
ing is associated with increased conciliation and
decreased avoidance motivation following the
offence.
In the target article’s study, the authors recruited a
sample of university undergraduates who were asked
to think of a particular person who treated them
unfairly and hurt them at some point in the past.
After visualising and re-experiencing the situation
again, participants described the interpersonal injury
they had received and then completed the
empathy, forgiving and behavioural self-report
measures. We summarised the associations reported
in the target article in Table 2, adopted from the
target article.

Extension: examining causal link with
empathy manipulation
We aimed to extend the replication study by manipu­
lating empathy. McCullough et al. (1997) indicated

1231

Table 1. Summary of hypotheses of the target article.
Hypothesis

Description

1

Empathy mediates relationships between dispositional
and environmental variables and their causal effects
on forgiving.
a There is a positive association between a wronged
person’s empathy for an offender and reported
forgiveness for the offender.
b Apology increases the likelihood of forgiving,
mediated by empathy.
2
Forgiving promotes constructive actions toward the
offender and inhibits destructive actions toward the
offender following an interpersonal offence.
a Forgiveness is positively associated with
conciliation motivation.
b Forgiveness is negatively associated with (i)
avoidance motivation and (ii) revenge
motivation.
c Forgiving is causally more proximal (and more
strongly related) to behavioural motivation (i.e.
conciliation, avoidance and revenge) than is
empathy.
3*
Clinical efforts to influence clients’ capacity to forgive
will succeed insofar as they induce empathy for the
offender.
Note: Hypothesis 3 is not included in the replication because it
involves a clinical intervention.

that one of the major limitations of their Study 1
was the correlational study design, limiting causal
claims implied in their model. We used the target’s
Study 1 as our control condition, and added two
additional conditions manipulating empathy in the
recalled situation.
Our main focus was the replication, with the exten­
sion added as an exploratory direction. Therefore, in
our extension we used the same recall method
about the elicited past experience, and built on top
of that. Our aim with the extension was to manipulate
the elicitation of recalled situations in which empathy
has been experienced so that the person can reflect
and evaluate other factors in that situation. Therefore,
the manipulation is of the recalled past experience
and not the empathy that the participant is experien­
cing while taking part in the experiment. This is
different from some of the research that tried to
manipulate empathy through a perspective-taking
approach for emotions experienced during the exper­
iment., in which participants were asked to remain
objective (vs. emotionally-attached) to the main char­
acter when reading a scenario (Batson et al.,
1997; Berenguer, 2007, 2010).
Our extension approach of manipulating elements
of a recalled past event is therefore aligned with the
replication and follows commonly used methods in
social psychology that study evaluations of emotion

1232

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Table 2. Target article: Means, standard deviations, internal consistency reliabilities and intercorrelations.
Variables

M

SD

α

1

2

3

4

5

1. Degree of apology
2. Empathy
3. Forgiving
4. Conciliatory behaviour
5. Avoidance behaviour

5.63
13.22
16.82
6.74
10.11

2.84
5.95
6.73
2.50
3.89

.79
.88
.87
.74
.90

_
.36**
.43**
.44**
-.47**

_
.67**
.63**
-.58**

_
.70**
-.73**

_
-.56**

_

Note: Apology scores ranged from 2 to 10. Empathy scores ranged from 0 to 20. Forgiving Scale scores ranged from 5 to 25. Conciliatory behav­
iour scores ranged from 2 to 10. Avoidance behaviour scores ranged from 3 to 15. **p < .01. Adopted from McCullough et al. (1997), p. 325.

ladened situations. We previously implemented
similar manipulations in recall tasks in various judg­
ment and decision-making replication projects (e.g.
Chen et al., 2023; Yeung & Feldman, 2022), both
based on classic articles in the literature that have pre­
viously employed a manipulation of factors in the
recalled scenario (e.g. Carter et al., 2012; Gilovich &
Medvec, 1994).

Pre-registration and open-science
We provided all materials, data and code on: https://
osf.io/fmuv2/.
This project received Peer Community in Registered
Report Stage 1 in-principle acceptance (https://osf.io/
q78fs/; https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id
= 380) after which we created a frozen pre-registration
version of the entire Stage 1 packet (https://osf.io/
c7m3v/) and proceeded to data collection. All
measures, manipulations, exclusions conducted for
this investigation are reported, and data collection
was completed before analyses.

Method
Power analysis
We calculated effect sizes (ES) and power based on
the statistics reported in the target article. Both the
ES and power were computed using R studio
(Version: 1.4.2) with packages “MBESS” and “pwr”.
We focused on the intercorrelations between the vari­
ables, aiming for a power of 0.95 with an alpha 0.05.
The largest minimum sample size required for the cor­
relational tests reported with significant results (i.e.
apology vs. empathy) was 94 participants. The calcu­
lation was based on the effect size of r = .36, with a
power of 0.95 and an alpha of 0.05.
To ensure we have enough power to detect all the
effects in the target article, we decided that the
sample size in our replication should not be lower

than the sample size in the target article’s study.
Thus, we followed the target article’s sample size of
239 participants. We conducted a sensitivity analysis
and found this sample is enough to detect corre­
lations of r = 0.21, which is weaker than the lower
bound of the weakest effect in the target article
(apology vs. empathy: r = 0.36, 95% Cl [0.24, 0.47]).
In our extension, we added two extra conditions by
manipulating empathy, and therefore decided to mul­
tiply the sample by three to 717 participants. Account­
ing for possible exclusions of 0–10% based on our
previous experience with the target sample, our inte­
grated design, and allowing for the potential of
additional analyses, we aimed for a larger total
sample of 800 participants. A sensitivity analysis indi­
cated that a sample of 717 (after exclusions) would
allow the detection of f = 0.15 for a three-conditions
ANOVA for our experimental design (95% power,
alpha = 5%, one-tail) for our extension. Also, the
sample would be sufficiently powered to detect con­
trasts of d = 0.33 (95% power, alpha = 5%, two-tail),
which correspond to a medium effect in social psy­
chology research (Xiao et al., 2023). Based on our pre­
vious experience, recall tasks in judgment and
decision-making tended to show medium to very
strong effects (e.g. Chen et al., 2023; Feldman et al.,
2016; Yeung & Feldman, 2022).

Participants
We recruited a total of 794 US American student par­
ticipants using Prolific (Mage = 28.8, SD = 12.2). We pro­
vided a comparison of the target article sample and
our replication and extension sample in Table 3.
We first pretested survey duration with 30 partici­
pants to make sure our time run estimate was accu­
rate and adjusted pay as needed, the data of the 30
participants was not analysed other than to assess
survey completion duration and needed pay adjust­
ments. These participants were included in the
overall analyses.

COGNITION AND EMOTION

1233

We summarised the experimental design in Table 4, a
between-subject experimental design with one inde­
pendent variable and three conditions. We manipu­
lated empathy towards the offender in the recalled
situation (i.e. High empathy vs. Low empathy vs.
Control) and compared the intercorrelations of the
dependent variables (e.g. perceived apology,
empathy and forgiving).

answer all the questions correctly before proceeding
to the next page.
In the High Empathy condition, participants (n =
264) were asked to recall a hurting experience that
they were “highly empathetic to the person who had
hurt you”, whereas in the Low Empathy condition,
they (n = 267) were asked to recall a hurting experi­
ence that they were “not empathetic to the person
who had hurt you”. Participants then described the
interpersonal injury they received and explained the
reason why they were empathetic/unempathetic
towards the offender, completing the self-report
measures of perceived apology, empathy, forgiveness
and behaviours.
The control condition was a replication of the
target article and closely followed the study’s
design. Participants (n = 263) were asked to think
of a person whom they experienced as treating
them unfairly and hurting them at some point in
the past without any indication/ reference of
empathy towards the offender. Then, participants
described the interpersonal injury they received,
completing the self-report measure as in the first
two conditions.
At the end of the experiment, participants
answered a number of funnelling questions and pro­
vided their demographic information. We provided a
more comprehensive overview of the survey pro­
cedure in “Instructions and experimental material” in
the supplementary.

Procedure

Manipulations

Participants completed the survey via the online
survey system Qualtrics. We employed the Qualtrics
fraud and spam prevention measures: reCAPTCHA,
prevent multiple submissions, prevent ballotstuffing,
bot detection, security scan monitor and relevantID.
Participants were randomly assigned into the
experimental conditions: High Empathy condition,
Low Empathy condition, control condition, which
were counterbalanced using the randomiser “evenly
present” function in Qualtrics.
We designed comprehension checks to ensure that
participants fully understood their tasks before
responding to our study measures. These comprehen­
sion check questions were as follows: “What type of
behaviour done on you are you asked to recall”,
“How many people are you asked to focus on”, and
“What emotion towards the offender in the situation
are you asked to recall”. Participants needed to

Participants were randomly assigned to one of
the three conditions. We expected that partici­
pants in the High Empathy condition would rate
higher empathy than those in the Low Empathy
condition.
We provided additional details of the manipula­
tions, the differences between the three conditions,
the experimental design, and complete scales used
in the current replication in “Materials and scales
used in the replication + extension experiment” in
the Supplementary Materials.

Table 3. Difference and similarities between target article and
replication.
McCullough et al.
(1997)
Sample size
Geographic origin
Gender
Ethnic group

239
University
undergraduate1
108 males, 131
females
83% White, 14%
Black, 3% other
Unreported
19

US Prolific
794
US American students
385 males, 381
females, 28 other/did
not disclose
N.A.

Median age (years)
24.0
Average age
28.8
(years)
Standard deviation Unreported
12.2
age (years)
Medium (location) Unreported
Computer (online)
Compensation
Extra course credit
Nominal payment
Year
1997
2023
Note: 1 Origin was not explicitly mentioned in the target article,
though we suspect it was US American, given the authors’ affilia­
tion at the time.

Experimental design

Measures
Replication
Offence-related information. Similarly to the target
article, participants indicated their age, gender, relation­
ship with the person who had hurt them, the time since

1234

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Table 4. Replication and extension experimental design.
Level of empathy
(between-subject)

Dependent variables
(DV)

Comprehension checks
(CC)

High empathy condition
Low empathy condition
Control condition
(Extension)
(Extension)
(Replication)
“you were highly empathetic toward
“you were not empathetic toward
No indication of empathy
the person who had hurt you.”
the person who had hurt you”
towards the offender
Offence-related information
Questions include:
“What was your relationship with the person who had hurt you”
“How long has it been since the event occurred”
“Please indicate the degree to which the offence had hurt you”
(1 = Hurt very little to 5 = Hurt so much)
“The person was not wrong in what he/ she did to me.”
(0 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree)
(Source: McCullough et al., 1997)
Perceived apology
“The offender has apologised?”
“The offender has attempted to explain their hurtful behaviour?”
(1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree)
(Source: McCullough et al., 1997)
Empathy
“Please rate each adjective to indicate the degree to which you feel each of the following affects for the
offender”
Sympathetic, empathic, concerned, moved, compassionate, warm, softhearted and tender
(0 = Not at all to 5 = Extremely)
(Source: Batson et al., 1982)
[Note: McCullough measured all 8 emotions, though only some analysed. We kept all 8.]
Forgiving
“I wish him/her well”, “I disapprove of him/her”, “I think favourably of him/her” and “I condemn the person.”
(0 = Not at all to 5 = Extremely)
“I have forgiven the person.”
(1 = I have not at all forgiven to 5 = I have completely forgiven)
(Source: Wade, 1989)
Conciliatory motivation
“I tried to make amends”
“I took steps toward reconciliation: Wrote them, called them, expressed love, showed concern … ”
(1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree)
Avoidance motivation
“I keep as much distance between us as possible”
“I live as if he/she doesn’t exist, isn’t around”
“I don’t trust him/her”
“I find it difficult to act warmly toward him/ her.”
“I avoid him/her”
“I cut off the relationship with him/her.”
“I withdraw from them”
(1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree)
(Source: McCullough et al., 1998)
Revenge motivation
“I’ll make him/her pay”
“I wish that something bad would happen to him/her”
“I want him/her to get what he/she deserves”
“I’m going to get even.”
“I want to see him/her hurt and miserable.”
(1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree)
(Source: McCullough et al., 1998)
Questions include:
1. What type of behaviour are you asked to recall?
(Someone treated me badly / Someone treated me nicely / Someone had an interaction with me)
2. How many people are you asked to focus on? (1 /2/ 3)

Note: CC questions were newly designed for this replication study but did not exist in the original article.

the offence occurred, and a brief description of the
offence. Many of the offenders whom participants
described were romantic partners (29.6%), relatives
(18.0%), or friends of the same gender (14.5%).

Then, participants indicated the degree to which
the offence hurt them: “The person was not wrong
in what he/she did to me” (0 = Strongly disagree; 5 =
Strongly agree).

COGNITION AND EMOTION

Perceived degree of apology. We measured the
extent to which participants perceived that the
offender apologised for the offence with a scale con­
sisting of two items (1 = Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly
agree; scores ranging from 2 to 10; Cronbach’s alpha
(α) = .85, McDonald’s omega (ω) = .85).

Affective empathy. Participants rated the degree to
which they felt toward their offender using the
Batson’s eight-item empathy scale (Archer et al., 1981;
Batson et al., 1986; Batson et al., 1983; Coke et al.,
1978; Fultz et al., 1986; Toi & Batson, 1982), refined by
McCullough et al. (1997) into four emotions (empathic,
concerned, moved, softhearted) (0 = Not at all; 5 =
Extremely; score ranging from 0 to 20; α = .90, ω = .91).

Forgiveness. We assessed the degree to which the

1235

“I avoid him/her”, “I cut off the relationship with him/
her”, or “I withdraw from him/her” (α = 0.94, ω = 0.94).
The five revenge motivation items were: “I’ll make
him/her pay”, “I wish that something bad would
happen to him/her.”, “I want him/her to get what he/
she deserves.”, “I’m going to get even.”, “I want to
see him/her hurt and miserable” (α = 0.89,, ω = 0.89).
Both the avoidance motivation and revenge items
from TRIM were on a 5-point scale (1 = Strongly dis­
agree; 5 = Strongly agree). Their overall scores ranged
from 7 to 35 and 5 to 25 respectively.

Extension
Offence-related information. Similar to the measures
in replication condition detailed above, participants
indicated their age, gender, relationship with the
person who had hurt them, how much time passed
since the offence occurred, as well as the degree of
the offence. Yet, in the extension conditions, partici­
pants were also asked to explain why they were
empathetic/ unempathetic to the offender according
to their randomly-assigned condition.

respondent experienced a constructive disposition
and the absence of a destructive disposition in
light of the offending partner’s hurtful actions
using the target’s five-item measure of forgiving: “I
wish him/her well”, “I disapprove of him/her”, “I
think favourably of him/her”, “I condemn the
person” and “I have forgiven the person”. The first
four items were on a 6-point scale (0 = Strongly dis­
agree; 5 = Strongly agree). The final forgiving item
was on a 5-point scale (1 = I have not at all forgiven;
5 = I have completely forgiven). Scores ranged from
1 to 25 (α = 0.86, ω = 0.87).

Affective empathy. The empathy measure of Batson’s

Conciliatory motivation toward the offender. Two

We made minor adjustments to the target article in
several aspects, summarised in Table 5.

items measured engagement in two reconciliation
behaviours: “I tried to make amends” and “I took
steps toward reconciliation: Wrote them, called
them, expressed love, showed concern, etc.”. (1 =
Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly agree; scores ranged
from 2 to 10; α = 0.83, ω = 0.83).

Avoidance and revenge motivations toward the
offender. This measure was derived from the transgres­
sion-related interpersonal motivations (TRIM) inventory
developed by McCullough et al. (1998). TRIM aimed at
evaluating respondents’ motivation to avoid personal
and psychological contact with the offender (i.e. avoid­
ance) and the motivation to seek revenge or see harm
come to the offender (i.e. revenge).
The seven avoidance motivation items were: “I keep
as much distance between us as possible”, “I live as if
he/she doesn’t exist, isn’t around”, “I don’t trust him/
her.”, “I find it difficult to act warmly toward him/her”,

eight-item scale in the target article was used as a
manipulation check of the empathy manipulation in
the extension.

Deviations

Evaluation criteria for replication findings
McCullough et al. (1997) conducted 10 correlation
tests in the target article as shown in Table 2. We
aimed to compare the replication’s control con­
dition effects with those in the target article using
the criteria set by LeBel et al. (2019) (see subsection
“Replication evaluation” in the Supplementary
Materials).

Replication closeness evaluation
We provided details on the classification of the repli­
cations using the criteria by LeBel et al. (2018) criteria
in Table 6 (see section “replication closeness evalu­
ation” in the supplementary). We did not set out to
replicate the nested structural equation models
(SEMs) in the original article due to its limitation in

1236

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Table 5. Comparison of target article versus replication.
Study design
Sample
characteristics
Procedure

Statistical
analysis

Conditions

Target article

Replication

Participants completed the
studies with pen and paper in
the laboratories.
N = 239
Sample origin:
University undergraduate
Items of all dependent variables
(DV) were not randomised
Three items for the measure of
Avoidance motivation
No comprehension check
Pearson’s R;
Nested structural equation
models (SEM)

Participants completed the
studies on an online survey.

Lower cost and higher efficiency.

N = 794
US American Prolific
students
Items of all DV were
randomised
Extended to seven items

Two extra conditions in extension; Generalisability of
results by including a wider variety of participants.

1 condition

1 conditions
identical to the target
(Control) with 2 extension
conditions.

Comprehension checks exist
Pearson’s R

Reason for change

Addressing potential order effects.
McCullough et al. (1998) modified their measure of
avoidance motivation with the TRIM inventory
Ensuring participants read and understood the task.
The SEM used in the original article were based on
correlations. Our extension changed to testing
causality. We toned down the importance of the
causal chain, and changed mediation to an
exploratory analysis.
To examine the causal relationship between
empathy and forgiveness in Extension

Table 6. Classification of the replication, based on LeBel et al. (2018).

Data analysis strategy

Design facet

Replication

Effect/hypothesis
IV construct
DV construct
IV
operationalisation
DV
operationalisation

Same
Same
Same
Same

Replication: correlation tests

Population (e.g.
age)

Similar

IV stimuli
DV stimuli
Procedural details
Physical settings

Same
Same
Similar
Different

Contextual
variables
Replication
classification

Different

Similar

Details of deviation

The transgression-related
interpersonal motivations
inventory (TRIM, McCullough
et al., 1998) is incorporated to
examine the behavioural
motivation of avoidance and
revenge.
Students were recruited
through an online research
platform Prolific using their
demographic filtering.
Order of items were randomised
Experiment is conducted online
instead of via traditional paper
survey
Participants were recruited
online using Prolific.

Close
replication

testing the proposed causal chain (Table 1). LeBel
et al. (2018) did not consider statistical tests as an
important criterion in its replication closeness evalu­
ation, yet we considered it relevant for replication
research. Thus, we summarised the replication as a
close replication (rather than a very close replication).

We conducted Pearson’s correlations to examine the
associations between the six measures of interest:
perceived apology, affective empathy, forgiving,
conciliatory motivation, avoidance and revenge
motivation.
We did not replicate the full three nested struc­
tural equation models (SEM) used in the target
article in our study. There are limitations in the
target article’s attempt to establish a causal
mediation relationship using SEM (Rohrer et al.,
2022), and requires more careful designs and much
larger samples than originally employed. Instead,
our extensions aimed to manipulate empathy to
test causality directly, and flagged the target’s
mediation analysis in the control condition as an
exploratory analysis, and not core to assessing the
target’s claims or replicability.
We employed Diedenhofen and Musch (2015)’s
“cocor” R package for correlation comparisons. The
“cocor” R package is powerful and comprehensive
since it compares overlapping correlations from
dependent groups with up to 10 commonly used
approaches (i.e. Dunn & Clark, 1969; Hendrickson
et al., 1970; Hittner et al., 2003; Hotelling, 1940;
Meng, 1992; Olkin, 1967; Pearson & Filon, 1898;
Steiger, 1980; Williams, 1959; Zou, 2007). These
would be conducted as exploratory analyses for
addressing Hypothesis 2c.

COGNITION AND EMOTION

Extension: the impact of empathy on
forgiveness
We conducted two between-subjects ANOVAs to
examine how apology and forgiveness differ across
the three conditions (high empathy vs. low
empathy vs. control). We conducted post-hoc tests
contrasting condition pairs. We chose post-hoc
Scheffe tests because they are the most conservative
post-hoc pairwise comparison method, generating
the widest confidence intervals of group means
difference.

Outliers and exclusions
In this study, we did not classify outliers. We included
all the data collected in our analysis. See section
“Exclusion criteria” in the supplementary for more
details.

Results

1237

affective empathy as well as affective empathy and
forgiveness in Figures 2 and 3.
We found support for hypotheses 2a and 2b that
forgiveness is positively correlated to conciliation
motivation, r(261) = 0.45, 95% CI [0.35, 0.54], p
< .001, and negatively correlated to avoidance motiv­
ation, r(261) = −0.73, 95% CI [−0.78, −0.67], p < .001.
We also found support for forgiveness as negatively
associated with revenge motivation, r(261) = −0.43,
95% CI [−0.52, −0.33], p < .001. We provided the
summary scatterplots in Figures 4–6.

Exploratory analysis: correlations robustness
checks
The variables violated assumptions of normality, and
we therefore added Spearman’s rho to Table 2
which were very similar to Pearson’s correlations
and supported the robustness of the associations.

Exploratory analysis: correlations comparisons

We summarised descriptive statistics in Table 7, corre­
lations in Table 8 and the statistical test results with
interpretation in Table 9. We conducted the analyses
with R (Version: 4.1.2).

Replication
We conducted 15 Pearson’s correlation tests to
examine the associations between variables in the
control (replication) condition, summarised in Table 8.
First, we found support for hypotheses 1a and 1b
that empathy is positively associated with perceived
apology, r(261) = 0.45, 95% CI [0.35, 0.55], p < .001,
and forgiveness, r(261) = 0.64, 95% CI [0.56, 0.70], p
< .001. We provided the summary scatterplots for
the relationship between perceived apology and

We conducted correlation comparisons with the
“cocor” R package and found partial support for
Hypothesis 2c that forgiveness is more strongly
associated with behavioural motivations (i.e. concilia­
tion, avoidance and revenge) than empathy. We
found support for empathy being positively corre­
lated to conciliation motivation, r(261) = 0.51, 95% CI
[0.41, 0.59], p < .001, avoidance motivation, r(261) =
−0.51, 95% CI [−0.60, −0.42], p < .001, but did not
find support for empathy as associated with revenge
motivation, r(261) = −0.11, 95% CI [−0.23, 0.01], p
= .08. All of the 10 correlation comparison approaches
indicated that forgiveness is more strongly associated
with avoidance and revenge than empathy, yet none
of the 10 comparison approaches indicated that for­
giveness is more strongly associated with conciliation

Table 7. Descriptive statistics for all conditions.

Perceived apology
Empathy
Forgiveness
Conciliatory motivation
Avoidance motivation
Revenge motivation

High empathy
(Extension)

Low empathy
(Extension)

Control
(Replication)

Overall

(n = 264)
5.18 [2.94]
9.56 [5.68]
14.9 [6.22]
5.58 [2.68]
20.47 [9.31]
8.01 [4.34]

(n = 267)
4.39 [2.7]
3.85 [4.72]
11.1 [6.4]
4.3 [2.53]
24.15 [9.19]
9.05 [4.82]

(n = 263)
4.29 [2.61]
4.69 [5.24]
10.98 [6.38]
4.52 [2.54]
24.37 [9,2]
9.06 [4.73]

(N = 794)
4.62 [2.78]
6.03 [5.79]
10.98 [6.38]
4.8 [2.64]
23 [9.39]
8.71 [4.66]

Note: Format: Mean [standard deviation]. Perceived apology ranged from 2 to 10.
Empathy ranged from 0 to 20.
Forgiveness ranged from 1 to 25.
Conciliatory motivation ranged from 2 to 10.
Avoidance motivation ranged from 7 to 35.
Revenge motivation ranged from 5 to 25.

1238

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Table 8. Control condition (Replication): Intercorrelations with confidence intervals.
Variable

M

SD

α

ω

1 – Perceived apology
2 – Empathy

4.29
4.69

2.61
5.24

0.85
0.90

0.85
0.91

3 – Forgiveness

10.98

6.38

0.86

0.87

4 – Conciliatory motivation

4.52

2.54

0.83

0.83

5 – Avoidance motivation

24.37

9.2

0.94

0.94

6 – Revenge motivation

9.06

4.73

0.89

0.89

1

2

3

4

5

.45***
[.35, .54]
(.43)
.34***
[.23, .44]
(.34)
.26***
[.15, .37]
(.29)
−.28***
[−.40, −.17]
(−.27)
.03
[−.09, .15]
(.05)

.64***
[.55, .70]
(.63)
.51***
[.41, .59]
(.50)
−.51***
[−.60, −.42]
(−.50)
−.11
[−.23, .01]
(−.15)

.45***
[.35, .54]
(.45)
−.73***
[−.78, −.67]
(−.72)
−.43***
[−.52, −.33]
(−.45)

−.32***
[−.42, .20]
(−.33)
−.05
[−.17, .07]
(−.04)

.37***
[.26, .47]
(.36)

Note: Correlations in the control condition for the replication (n = 263). Format: Pearson’s correlations [confidence interval] (Spearman’s rho).
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

Table 9. Summary of statistical tests and their interpretation.
Target article

Hypothesis
p

Effect size

1a

<.001

r = .67

1b

<.001

r = .36

2a

<.001

r = .70

2bi

<.001

r = -.73

2bii

/

/

Replication
Effect size

Interpretation

CI

p

CI

[0.59,
0.73]
[0.24,
0.47]
[0.73,
0.76]
[−0.78,
−0.66]
/

<.001

r = .63

[0.56, 0.70]

Signal, consistent

<.001

r = .45

[0.35, 0.55]

Signal, consistent

<.001

r = .45

[0.34, 0.54]

Signal, inconsistent, smaller

<.001

r = -.73

[−0.78, – 0.67]

Signal, consistent

<.001

r = -.43

[−0.52, 0.33]

Signal

Note: Effects are Pearson’s correlations. CI = 95% confidence intervals. The interpretations of the outcomes are based on LeBel et al. (2019).

than empathy. We provided full analyses and results
for the comparisons in the “Additional analyses and
results” section in the supplementary.

Comparing replication to original findings
We replicated all of the supported findings of the
target article. We summarised the replication results
and their interpretations based on LeBel et al. (2019)
in Table 9.

Exploratory analysis: mediation analyses
We conducted an exploratory mediation (bootstrap­
ping) test to examine the meditation effects of
empathy between apology and forgiveness in the
control condition. We summarised the effects in
Figure 10.
We found support for the effect of perceived
apology on forgiveness as being mediated via

affective empathy. Examining the regression coeffi­
cients, we found an association between perceived
apology and forgiveness (β = 0.83, t(261) = 5.82, p
< .001), between empathy and forgiveness (β = 0.74,
t(260) = 11.32, p < .001) and between apology and
empathy (β = 0.91, t(261) = 8.24, p < .001). The
average direct effect was 0.15, 95% CI [−0.13 to
00.45], p = .3, whereas the bootstrapped unstandar­
dised indirect effect (Average Causal Mediation
Effect, ACME) was 0.67, 95% CI [0.47–0.89], p < .001.
Therefore, we found support for an indirect effect of
affective empathy.

Discussion
We conducted a replication and extensions Regis­
tered Report of the empathy model of forgiveness.
Our results are consistent with the findings reported
in the target article (see Table 9 for a summary).

COGNITION AND EMOTION

1239

Figure 2. Replication (Control) condition: Association between perceived apology and affective empathy.

Extensions: empathy manipulation
Manipulation checks
We conducted independent samples Welch’s t-tests
(two-tailed) and found that affective empathy in the
high empathy condition (n = 264; M = 9.56, SD =
5.68) was stronger than in the low empathy condition
(n = 267; M = 3.85, SD = 4.72; Md = 4.84; t (509.74) =
12.58, p < .001; d = 1.09, 95% CI [0.91, 1.27]), and the
control condition (n = 263; M = 4.69, SD = 5.24; Md =
4.87; t (521.84) = 10.23, p < .001; d = 0.89, 95% CI
[0.71, 1.07]), indicating a successful manipulation
(see Figure 7).
The differences in affective empathy between the
low empathy condition and the control condition
were weaker (t(520.72) = −1.93, p = .050; d = 0.17,
95% CI [−0.00, 0.34]), suggesting that for this recall
task, when no instructions are given, people are
more likely to recall low empathy situations.

Forgiveness and apology
We conducted a one-way ANOVA and found support
for empathy affecting forgiveness and differences in

forgiveness across the three empathy conditions (F
(2, 791) = 32.8, p < .001; η2p = 0.08, 90% CI [0.05, 0.11];
See Figure 8).
We conducted post-hoc Scheffe tests and found
that forgiveness in the high empathy condition (n
= 264; M = 14.9, SD = 6.22) was higher than in the
low empathy condition (n = 267; M = 11.1, SD = 6.4;
Md = 3.80, 95% CI [2.46, 5.15], p < .001; d = 0.60,
95% CI [0.43, 0.77]), and higher than in the control
condition (n = 263; M = 10.98, SD = 6.38; Md = 3.92,
95% CI [2.57, 5.28, ], p < .001; d = 0.62, 95% CI
[0.45, 0.79]). Yet, we did not find support for differ­
ences in forgiveness between the low empathy
condition and the control condition (Md = 0.12,
95% CI [−1.23, 1.47], p = .97; d = −0.02, 95% CI
[−0.19, 0.15]).
We found support for differences in apology
between the three empathy conditions (F(2, 791) =
8.18, p < .001; η2p = .02, 90% CI [0.01, 0.04]; see Figure 9).
We conducted post-hoc Scheffe tests and found
that perceived apology in the high empathy condition
(M = 5.18, SD = 2.94) was higher than in the low
empathy condition (M = 4.39, SD = 2.7; Md = −0.78,

1240

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Figure 3. Replication (Control) condition: Association between affective empathy and forgiveness.

95% CI [−1.37, −0.20], p = .005; d = 0.28, 95% CI [0.11,
0.46]), and higher than in control condition (M = 4.29,
SD = 2.61; Md = 0.89, 95% CI [0.30, 1.47], p = .001; d =
0.32, 95% CI [0.15, 0.49]). We found no support for
differences in perceived apology between the low
empathy condition and the control condition (Md =
0.10, 95% CI [−0.48, 0.68], p = .916; d = −0.04, 95% CI
[−0.21, 0.13]).

Replication
Overall, we found that: (1) affective empathy toward
the offender is positively associated with forgiveness,
(2) perceived apology is positively associated with
empathy, (3) forgiveness is positively associated with
conciliatory motivation and negatively associated
with avoidance and revenge motivation and (4) for­
giveness is more strongly associated with behavioural
motivation (i.e. conciliation, avoidance and revenge)
than is empathy.

These results are consistent with McCullough et al.
(1997)’s conceptualisation of forgiveness as empathyfacilitated motivational changes that promote
relationship-constructive actions (i.e. conciliation)
and inhibit relationship-destructive actions (i.e. avoid­
ance and revenge) toward the offending person.
More than two decades after the original research
was first published, the effect sizes are also remark­
ably similar and comparable to those in the target
article, indicating the robustness and replicability of
McCullough et al. (1997)’s model of forgiveness.
Only two of the correlations from the hypotheses
showed minor deviations from the target article’s
reported findings, with slightly stronger association
between perceived apology and affective empathy
(Original: r = .36; Replication: r = .45), and a weaker
association between forgiveness and conciliatory
motivation (Original: r = .70; Replication: r = .45).
Some often question the value of replication
studies by stating that highly cited studies are self-

COGNITION AND EMOTION

1241

Figure 4. Replication (Control) condition: Association between forgiveness and conciliatory motivation.

evidently reliable and replicable. We believe these
reactions often reflect a hindsight bias (a.k.a., knewit-all-along phenomenon) that many, even the
researchers, may hold towards replication studies.
We previously demonstrated an ironic display of hind­
sight bias over the replicability of a classic experiment
on hindsight bias (Study 3; Chen et al., 2021). To try
and address hindsight bias over the replicability of
our target article, we conducted a prediction poll on
Twitter on 26 March 2023 (Feldman, 2023), and
found that 21 out of 30 (70%) of the researchers in
the community predicted an unsuccessful replication
of McCullough et al. (1997)’s Study 1, lower than pre­
dictions for other targets included in the same Twitter
poll. These predictions stand in strong contrast to the
very successful replication we reported here, and
further highlights the importance of testing intuitions
and the possible misperceptions that some may hold
towards the importance of comprehensive indepen­
dent Registered Reports of direct replication.

Extensions: causality
We ran extensions examining the causal link of empathy
on forgiveness and perceived apology. Our findings
showed that: (1) affective empathy experienced by the
wronged person contributes to interpersonal forgive­
ness, and (2) wronged persons who are empathetic
towards the offender tend to perceive the offender as
more apologetic. Overall, we found empirical support
for our hypothesis that affective empathy is causally
linked to forgiveness and perceived apology.
Although the causal link between empathy and for­
giveness was proposed by the target article and is
experimentally supported in our extension, the demon­
strated impact of empathy on perceived apology is a
new addition. Rather than a simple one-way causeand-effect influence of perceived apology on affective
empathy proposed in the original model, our results
indicated that their relationship may be more
complex. Affective empathy may also simultaneously

1242

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Figure 5. Replication (Control) condition: Association between forgiveness and avoidance motivation.

influence the perceived apology in those situations.
More research is needed to better understand the inter­
play between empathy and perceived apology and how
it impacts the apology-forgiveness link.
As an exploratory analysis, we examined the mediat­
ing effect of empathy on the apology-forgiveness link.
McCullough et al. (1997) hypothesized that affective
empathy mediates the relationship between disposition
on environmental variables and their causal effect on for­
giveness. They tried to illustrate the mediational effect
with structural equation modelling, whereas we explored
its mediating effect with a bootstrapping test. Our
findings in general supported the mediating effect of
empathy on the apology-forgiveness relationship.

Implications, limitations and directions for
future research
We note several limitations. First, we followed the
target article’s methods and did not correct for

multiple analyses and comparisons, which may poten­
tially hamper the reliability of our results. We con­
ducted many correlational tests and multiple
ANOVAs with two dependent variables and pairwise
comparisons, with some of the variables being not
normally distributed, which may have heightened
Type I error rate. Yet, we do not believe these have
impacted our interpretation, as most of the effects
were very large and the findings met a criteria of
very low alpha (p < .001).
Second, we followed the target article’s methods
and did not employ any outlier handling strategies.
As a close replication research study, we tried to
ground our study on the original methodology as
closely as possible to test replicability on the same
grounds that the target article had to meet. Neverthe­
less, parametric tests, such as the Pearson corre­
lations, may be sensitive to outliers (Knief &
Forstmeier, 2021), and so we see room for discussion
on whether replications should closely follow or aim

COGNITION AND EMOTION

1243

Figure 6. Replication (Control) condition: Association between forgiveness and revenge motivation.

to improve on the target’s methods, even if not up to
the best practices. We do not believe this had any
impact on the results, as the highly similar effects of
the target and the replication suggest.
Third, we note that our empathy manipulation in
the extension was a manipulation of recalled past
empathetic (vs. unempathetic) offending experience,
but not the emotion that the participants experienced
while participating in the experiment. This design is
meant to align our extension with the methods
used in the replication. There are important differ­
ences between manipulating the recalled past situ­
ation rather than the actual affect that participants
experience. Future research may aim to supplement
our methods and adopt more direct other empathy
manipulation techniques such as Batson et al.
(1991)’s perspective-taking approach, contrasting
objective versus emotional perspective towards the
offenders.

We took the first step in manipulating empathy,
and see promise for future research in also manipulat­
ing apology. Our extension revealed that affective
empathy impacted perceived apology, yet it remains
to be determined how perceived apology exactly
affects and interacts with empathy, forgiveness and
other behavioural motivations. The link between per­
ceived apology and forgiveness has been widely
studied in the last decades (e.g. Hareli & Eisikovits,
2006; Schumann, 2012; Struthers et al., 2008), but
few studies have investigated the link between per­
ceived apology and empathy.
Following a successful replication of McCullough
et al. (1997), we suggest future replications of impor­
tant seminal follow-ups such as McCullough et al.
(1998). McCullough et al. (1998)’s study, which was
grounded and extended on our target article, has
been an influential research paper contributing to
our understanding of interpersonal forgiveness, and

1244

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

Figure 7. Empathy (manipulation check): Comparison of empathy conditions.
Note: Affective empathy scale is from 0 to 20, higher values indicate a stronger affective empathy towards the offender.

Figure 8. Forgiveness: Comparison of empathy conditions.
Note: Forgiveness scale is from 1 to 25, higher values indicate a stronger tendency to forgive the offender.

COGNITION AND EMOTION

1245

Figure 9. Perceived apology: Comparison of empathy conditions.
Note: Perceived apology scale is from 2 to 10, higher values indicate a stronger perceived apology from the offender.

Figure 10. Exploratory mediation analyses in the control condition.
Note: a b and c are regression coefficients between variables. ***p < .001. (Average direct effect).

examining rumination, closeness and revenge, which
were incorporated into their original forgiveness
model. At the time of writing (April 2023), there
were 2603 Google Scholar citations of the research,
with critical follow-up theoretical and empirical
papers. We took initial steps to partially replicate
some of the work by McCullough et al. (1998) by
including the revenge measure in our replication,
yet we see the value in a more comprehensive revisit­
ing of their study. Importantly, as far as we know,

there are no direct replications for the extended
model of forgiveness.

Conclusion
Our replication of McCullough et al. (1997)’s Study 1
was successful. We found support for the empathy
model of forgiveness, with affective empathy posi­
tively associated with perceived apology and forgive­
ness, forgiveness positively associated with

1246

C. F. CHAN AND G. FELDMAN

conciliation and negatively associated with avoidance
and revenge. In our extension, we demonstrated a
direct causal link between empathy and forgiveness,
and between empathy and perceived apology. Our
exploratory extensions revealed an indirect media­
tional effect of affective empathy on the apology-for­
giveness relationship.

Disclosure statement

Continued.
Chi-Fung
Chan

Role
Methodology
Project administration
Resources
Software
Supervision
Validation
Visualisation
Writing-original draft
Writing-review and editing

Gilad
Feldman

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

ORCID

The project is supported by the University of Hong Kong Teach­
ing Development Grant.

Chi Fung Chan
Gilad Feldman

Authorship declaration
Chi-Fung CHAN conducted the replication as part of his thesis in
psychology.
Gilad Feldman guided the project, supervised each step in
the project, ran data collection and edited the manuscript for
submission.

Rights
CC BY or equivalent licence is applied to the AAM arising from
this submission. (clarification).
Recommended for publication by Peer Community in Regis­
tered Reports on August 7, 2023. See recommendation and
open peer-review on: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100444

Citation of the target research article
McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L., & Rachal, K. C. (1997).
Interpersonal Forgiving in Close Relationships. Journal of Per­
sonality and Social Psychology, 73(2), 321–336. https://doi.org/
10.1037/0022-3514.73.2.321.

Contributor roles taxonomy
Role
Conceptualisation
Pre-registration
Data curation
Formal analysis
Funding acquisition
Investigation
Pre-registration peer review /
verification
Data analysis peer review /
verification

Chi-Fung
Chan

Gilad
Feldman

X
X

X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X
(Continued )

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7425-8421
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2812-6599

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