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Many social interactions and situations are defined partly in terms of social roles. Hunter and prey, mentor and protégé, aspiring lover and reluctant object of affection, teacher and student, plaintiff and defendant, physician and patient, performer and evaluator-these examples indicate how roles provide structure for situations. Each person has a part to play, and the conflicting or complementary scripts for the roles provide the basis for the interaction. The roles also provide different perspectives on the action and increase the possibility that the interaction will be interpreted and recalled differently by the people who took part in it. The social mind is ineluctably immersed in situated interactions, and hence its cognitive processes are often subject to powerful motivations.

This chapter will focus on an especially powerful pair of situational roles, namely, victim and perpetrator. These roles are inherent in interpersonal transgressions: One person (the perpetrator) does something to harm or offend another person (the victim). The episode begins, perhaps, with some provocation or motive that leads the perpetrator to act in the offensive fashion. It ends with the victim either forgiving the perpetrator or holding a grudge; in some cases, it ends with the death of one or both of the participants. The central theme of this chapter is that victim and perpetrator have different perspectives on the transgression episode that can often cause them to perceive, interpret, and remember it quite differently. These