Forgiveness is a powerful feature of human social life, allowing for the restoration of positive cooperative relationships. Despite its importance, we know relatively little about how forgiveness develops during early life and the features that shape forgiveness decisions. Here, we investigated forgiveness behavior in children aged 5–10 years (N = 257) from the United States, varying transgressor intent and remorse in a behavioral task that pitted punishment against forgiveness. We found that baseline levels of forgiveness are high, suggesting that children assume the best of transgressors in the absence of information about intent and remorse. We also found age-related increases in sensitivity to intent but not remorse, such that older children are more likely to forgive accidental transgressions. Because forgiveness is an important tool in the human social toolkit, exploring the ways in which this ability develops across age can help us to better understand the early roots of human cooperation.

宽恕是人类社会生活的一个强大特征，可以恢复积极的合作关系。尽管它很重要，但我们对早年宽恕如何发展以及影响宽恕决定的特征知之甚少。在这里，我们调查了 5-10 岁儿童的宽恕行为（N = 257) 来自美国，在一项行为任务中改变了违法者的意图和悔恨，将惩罚与宽恕进行了对比。我们发现宽恕的基线水平很高，这表明在缺乏关于意图和悔恨的信息的情况下，儿童会承担最好的违规者。我们还发现与年龄相关的对意图的敏感度增加，但没有悔恨，因此年龄较大的孩子更有可能原谅意外的违规行为。因为宽恕是人类社会工具包中的一个重要工具，探索这种能力跨年龄发展的方式可以帮助我们更好地了解人类合作的早期根源。