Beyond accidents: Young children’s forgiveness of third-party intentional transgressors

•6-year-olds evaluated accidental remorseful transgressors more positively than intentional ones.•5-year-olds only showed this preference in their behavior (resource distribution)•6-year-olds evaluated remorseful intentional transgressors more positively than unremorseful ones.•By school age, children’s forgiveness of transgressors accounts for both intentions and remorse. To maintain our cooperative relationships, it is critical that we repair these relationships when they are damaged by transgressions. Key to this repair is forgiveness. Previous research suggests that adults and children are more forgiving of remorseful transgressors than of unremorseful ones after accidental transgressions. However, little is known about whether children’s forgiveness also takes the transgressors’ intentions into account. Using a third-person video paradigm with children in the United States, Study 1 found that 6-year-olds (n = 20; 10 girls; 60% White) were more likely to negatively evaluate an intentional transgressor and give more resources to an accidental transgressor when both transgressors showed remorse, whereas 5-year-olds (n = 20; 10 girls; 80% White) showed this effect only in their resource distribution. Study 2 found that 6-year-olds (n = 18; 7 girls; 83% White) were more likely to positively evaluate and share more resources with a remorseful intentional transgressor than with an unremorseful intentional one. Thus, by school age in the United States, children’s forgiveness, at least as bystanders, begins to take into account both the transgressor’s intentions and the display of remorse.