Forgiveness weakens women’s counter-empathy both in the stage of self-oriented and other-oriented emotional responses

Counter-empathy may have more serious negative effects on women than on men. Sixty-four female Chinese university students participated in this study. Based on the counter-empathy model in a competitive setting, we examined how forgiveness affects counter-empathy. We manipulated the degree of participants' forgiveness toward their opponents by changing the type of information they received from their opponents. We also measured counter-empathy through self-reported pleasantness caused by opponents' facial expressions (smiles or frowns). We found that forgiveness can effectively alleviate women's counter-empathy, restraining their emotional experience from being inconsistent with the offender and enhancing their empathic concern toward the offender. We preliminarily explored how forgiveness works on counter-empathy and provided insight into the use of forgiveness to maintain global women's emotional health.