Twenty-one years ago Rwanda was torn apart by violence. Members of the Hutu majority slaughtered their Tutsi neighbors, killing hundreds of thousands of Tutsi minorities in only four months. Once the massacre finally stopped, a difficult question arose: Was there a way to right these monstrous wrongs without igniting a murderous cycle of revenge and retribution?
Such a cycle would be the epitome of the ancient “eye for an eye” notion of justice, in which punishment is commensurate with the crime, an approach that still underlies most modern legal systems, including that of the U.S. Decades of research have demonstrated that people have a strong proclivity to punish transgressors. The practice can serve other functions, such as deterrence, but retribution is arguably a central goal. In fact, we as individuals punish even when it costs us to do so. One 1995 study found that if treated very unfairly, some people were willing to forgo up to three month's salary if it meant they could punish the perpetrator.
[For more of this story, written by Oriel FeldmanHall and Peter Sokol-Hessner, go to http://www.scientificamerican....neglect-forgiveness/]
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