Executive function and preschoolers’ responses to severe transgressions: implications for early forgiveness

Forgiveness can help preserve valuable relationships after harm, but it is also a self-regulatory challenge: victims must inhibit retaliatory impulses, shift away from hostile appraisals, and keep longer-term relational goals in mind. However, little is known about the self-regulatory capacities associated with individual differences in young children's responses to transgressions. Japanese 4- and 5-year-olds viewed two live puppet vignettes depicting severe physical transgressions without apology or repair and responded from the victim's perspective. After each vignette, children selected an immediate outward response toward the transgressor: an explicit conciliatory response, sad protest, angry protest, or silence. They also reported their anger and retaliatory desire. Children completed three executive-function tasks indexing cognitive flexibility (Dimensional Change Card Sort), delay of gratification, and reward-punishment decision making (child gambling task). Results indicated that executive-function components were differentially associated with children's post-transgression responses: higher cognitive flexibility was associated with a lower likelihood of selecting the explicit conciliatory response and a higher likelihood of angry protest, suggesting that cognitive flexibility may support boundary-setting protest rather than immediate conciliation in high-severity, no-repair contexts. Better reward-punishment decision making was linked to weaker retaliatory desire, whereas delay of gratification was not uniquely associated with anger or retaliation. Together, these findings refine developmental accounts of forgiveness by suggesting that preschoolers' responses to harm are not governed by a single regulatory capacity: cognitive flexibility tracked outward protest versus conciliation, whereas reward-punishment decision making tracked retaliatory motivation.