The soothing effects of forgiveness on victims’ and perpetrators’ blood pressure

A laboratory experiment tested whether conciliatory behavior predicts lower blood pressure following spouses’ discussion of a recent marital transgression. Sixty-eight married couples discussed unresolved transgressions—with random assignment determining whether the husband or the wife was in the victim role—and then rated victim and perpetrator conciliatory behavior (with the former akin to forgiveness and the latter akin to amends) while watching a videotape of their just-completed discussion. Participants’ blood pressure was measured 40 min later. Actor–partner interdependence modeling analyses revealed that victim conciliatory behavior during the discussion predicted not only lower victim blood pressure but also lower perpetrator blood pressure after the discussion. Perpetrator conciliatory behavior during the discussion was not associated with victim or perpetrator blood pressure. Forgiveness is the economy of the heart . . . forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits. —Hannah Moore Relative to individuals who harbor grudges, individuals who forgive transgressions tend to experience enhanced psychological and physical well-being (Witvliet, Ludwig, & Vander Laan, 2001; Worthington & Scherer, 2004; Worthington, Witvliet, Pietrini, & Miller, 2007), especially in close, committed Peggy A. Hannon, Department of Health Services, University of Washington; Eli J. Finkel, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University; Madoka Kumashiro, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK; Caryl E. Rusbult, Department of Social Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This research was supported by a grant to the last author from the Templeton Foundation (Grant 5158).We would like to thank the Marriage Project Team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for all of their contributions to the study presented in this article. Correspondence should be addressed to Peggy Hannon, Health Promotion Research Center, University of Washington, 1107 NE 45th Street, Ste. 200, Seattle, WA 98105, e-mail: [email protected]. relationships (Karremans, Van Lange, Ouwerkerk, & Kluwer, 2003). As suggested by the quote above, forgiveness also predicts healthy physiological functioning, including lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure (Lawler et al., 2003; Witvliet et al., 2001). A recent review of the forgiveness literature suggests that forgiveness, particularly in close relationships, leads to reduced psychological tension; this reduction in psychological tension promotes physical well-being (Karremans & Van Lange, 2008). Extant forgiveness research has focused almost exclusively on the effects of forgiving on the health of the victim (i.e., the forgiver). The only study that directly examined physiological responses to receiving forgiveness demonstrated that the brows of perpetrators who imagined receiving forgiveness for a past transgression furrowed less (suggesting less negative emotion) than did the brows of perpetrators who imagined their victims holding a grudge (Witvliet, Ludwig, & Bauer, 2002). No studies to date have examined perpetrators’ physiological responses to receiving forgiveness during interactions with