Book Review The Need to Observe Forgiveness

Michael McCullough, a social psychologist who is active in research on forgiveness and the evolutionary bases of religious behavior, has written a book on the natural bases of revenge and forgiveness. It is timely for a number of reasons. The research literature on forgiveness is increasing rapidly and there is need for review, synthesis, and theory construction (Recine, Werner, and Recine, 2007). After having dwelled in separate realities for aeons, evolutionary biologists and social scientists are reconciling forces and expertise in the creation of a new science of human nature (Fowler and Schreiber, 2008; cf. Holden, 2008; Jasny, Kelner, and Pennisi, 2008). This book illustrates this welcome development. Finally, Beyond Revenge complements a new direction in comparative research on aggression, focusing on natural mechanisms that keep aggression in check and repair social damage in its aftermath (de Waal, 2000). For those of us with a stake in such enterprises, this book is a welcome event. McCullough presents us with a range of proximate and ultimate causes of normative patterns of revenge-seeking and forgiving, although he has little to say about development and phenotypic plasticity in vengefulness and forgiveness. McCullough does not fall for the one gene one aspect of human nature fallacy; he is not looking for a forgiveness gene. Instead, he paints