What Repeated Behavior Teaches Us

I think we sometimes confuse remembering with resenting.

Someone hurts us. We eventually move past the anger. Maybe we forgive them. Maybe we understand why they behaved the way they did. Maybe we genuinely wish them well.

And then something similar happens again.

Eventually, we change how we interact with that person.

We stop telling them certain things. We stop asking them for help. We stop relying on promises we have learned may not become actions. We give ourselves a little more distance. We lower an expectation.

And sometimes the response is: "You're still holding that against me."

But are we?

There is an important difference between holding a grudge and allowing experience to inform our expectations.

Psychological research on trust suggests that this distinction isn't merely semantics.

Trust is something we learn

One of the most interesting pieces of research I found while thinking about this was a 2026 meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Researchers Caitlin Duncan and colleagues analyzed 404 effect sizes from 68 studies involving more than 8,000 participants. The studies used variations of what's known as a repeated Trust Game: essentially, people interact with the same partner multiple times and have opportunities to learn whether that person behaves trustworthily.

What most strongly influenced people's trust?

The other person's actual behavior.

Specifically, the researchers found that a partner's behavioral trustworthiness - how reliably they reciprocated over repeated interactions - was by far the most influential factor in trust learning.

In other words, people paid attention. They learned from repetition. They adjusted their behavior accordingly.

The researchers concluded that in repeated interactions, people's trust learning was driven primarily by the trustworthiness their partners demonstrated through their behavior over time. (Duncan et al., 2026)

That sounds less like "holding a grudge" and more like one of the basic functions of human learning.

If I lend you something once and you forget to return it, that's an incident.

If I lend you something five times and have to chase you down five times to get it back, I now have information.

If you repeatedly tell me you'll arrive at 6:00 and routinely appear at 7:00, eventually I may stop organizing my evening around your stated arrival time.

That doesn't necessarily mean I'm furious.

It may simply mean I've updated my expectations.

Remembering isn't the same thing as ruminating

There is another distinction worth making here.

Psychologists have studied rumination following interpersonal hurts - the repeated mental replaying of an offense.

Michael McCullough, Giacomo Bono and Lindsey Root followed people dealing with interpersonal transgressions across three longitudinal studies. They found that increases in rumination were associated with reductions in forgiveness, with anger helping explain that relationship. Their longitudinal analyses more consistently supported rumination preceding reductions in forgiveness than the reverse. (McCullough, Bono & Root, 2007)

That gives us a useful contrast.

Rumination might sound like: "I can't stop thinking about what you did. I replay the conversation. I imagine what I should have said. I get angry all over again every time I think about it."

Observation might sound like: "This has happened several times. I don't want to keep putting myself in the same situation."

Those aren't psychologically identical experiences.

One keeps us emotionally engaged with an injury.

The other may simply allow the injury to become information.

Letting go of resentment doesn't require letting go of information.

One incident isn't necessarily a pattern

There is an important caution here, though.

Human beings aren't perfectly objective observers of one another.

Once we've formed an impression of someone - selfish, unreliable, inconsiderate, dramatic, dishonest - it can become tempting to interpret everything they do through that existing judgment.

That's why I don't particularly like the popular advice: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

Sometimes? Absolutely.

But sometimes people have terrible days. Sometimes they misunderstand something. Sometimes they're frightened, grieving, overwhelmed, immature or simply wrong.

Sometimes people change.

Research on impression formation gives us reason to leave room for that possibility.

Jeremy Cone, Kathryn Flaharty and Melissa Ferguson studied whether people's implicit impressions of others could change when new information appeared. Across three studies, they found that new evidence that was sufficiently believable and meaningful could produce changes in impressions that persisted for days, weeks or even months. (Cone, Flaharty & Ferguson, 2021)

So perhaps healthy discernment requires two abilities at once:

Notice repeated evidence.

And remain willing to notice when the evidence changes.

That's the difference between recognizing a pattern and issuing a permanent verdict.

The question isn't "Have they ever hurt me?"

Everybody we love will probably hurt us at some point.

We will hurt them too.

Maybe a more useful question is: What happens after the hurt?

Do they listen? Do they become curious about your experience? Can they tolerate hearing that their intentions and their impact weren't the same? Do they apologize without immediately explaining why you shouldn't be upset? Do they make an effort to repair the damage? And, eventually, does anything actually change?

Because repair is also a pattern.

Someone who occasionally hurts you but consistently listens, repairs and changes their behavior may ultimately demonstrate considerable trustworthiness.

Someone else may repeatedly hurt you, apologize beautifully, and then continue behaving exactly the same way.

Those are very different relationships.

Forgiveness doesn't erase your nervous system's filing cabinet

Research on forgiveness also complicates the idea that forgiving someone should automatically restore everything that existed before an offense.

Peter Strelan and colleagues examined forgiveness in close relationships across three studies and found that post-transgression trust played a major role in forgiveness, even after accounting for factors including apology, empathy, perceived intent and the hurtfulness of the offense. (Strelan, Karremans & Krieg, 2017)

Trust matters because relationships involve vulnerability.

When I trust you with something, I'm making a prediction.

I predict that you'll show up. I predict that you'll keep something private. I predict that you'll treat me respectfully when you're angry. I predict that you'll take responsibility if something goes wrong.

Repeated experiences give us evidence about how accurate those predictions are.

And sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is update them.

So how do I know whether I'm holding a grudge?

Maybe these are useful questions:

Am I still trying to punish this person for what happened? Do I regularly replay the offense and reactivate my anger? Am I secretly hoping they'll suffer because they hurt me? Have I decided that nothing they ever do could change my opinion of them? Or have I simply changed my expectations based on repeated experience? If their behavior genuinely changed over time, would I be willing to notice?

That last question may be particularly important.

A grudge can become a fixed verdict: "You did this. Therefore this is who you are forever."

Healthy observation is more flexible: "Based on what I've repeatedly experienced, this is what I currently expect. If the pattern changes consistently, I'm willing to update my expectations."

Sometimes the past is useful information

I don't think emotional maturity requires pretending every interaction begins with a blank slate.

Experience is supposed to teach us things.

We can be compassionate about why someone behaves the way they do and still acknowledge the effect their behavior has on us.

We can forgive someone and still decide not to depend on them.

We can stop being angry and still establish a boundary.

We can understand someone's limitations without volunteering to repeatedly be hurt by them.

And we can leave open the possibility that they may eventually change.

Maybe the difference is this:

A grudge keeps asking the past to hurt someone.

Discernment allows the past to teach us something.

One keeps us tied to an injury. The other asks us to learn from experience - while remaining willing to learn something new.

Sources

Duncan, C., Sganzerla, L., Kaltwasser, L., & Dziobek, I. (2026). Trust learning in the repeated trust game: A meta-analytic study. British Journal of Psychology, 117, 1026-1055. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70045

McCullough, M. E., Bono, G., & Root, L. M. (2007). Rumination, emotion, and forgiveness: Three longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(3), 490-505. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.490

Cone, J., Flaharty, K., & Ferguson, M. J. (2021). The long-term effects of new evidence on implicit impressions of other people. Psychological Science, 32(2), 173-188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620963559

Strelan, P., Karremans, J. C., & Krieg, J. (2017). What determines forgiveness in close relationships? The role of post-transgression trust. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(1), 161-180. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12173