Forgiveness is a significant intervention for healing interpersonal injury. Yet therapists do not often use forgiveness intervention. Employing a semantic perspective and a survey design (n = 307), this study investigated whether the language used to rationalize forgiveness intervention (set at five levels: personal growth, relationship reconciliation, spiritual issue, others' growth, and pardo...

The authors examined how conciliatory gestures exhibited in response to interpersonal transgressions influence forgiveness and feelings of friendship with the transgressor. In Study 1, 163 undergraduates who had recently been harmed were examined longitudinally. Conciliatory gestures exhibited by transgressors predicted higher rates of forgiveness over 21 days, and this relationship was mediate...

The topic of forgiveness has received increased attention in the psychological literature; however, definitional and operational clarity remains a stumbling block. We propose that the study of first-person experiential accounts can enrich ongoing definitional and psychometric efforts. We systematically examined such accounts of forgiveness, identifying recurrent themes and then clustering these...

Across four studies, guilt led to forgiveness of others’ transgressions. In Study 1, people prone to experience guilt (but not shame) were also prone to forgive others for past misdeeds. In Study 2, we manipulated harmand inequity-based guilt; both increased forgiveness of others’ transgressions. Further, the effect of guilt on forgiveness was mediated by identification with the transgressor. I...

Both self-forgiveness and other-forgiveness are associated with greater relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships. The present research examines whether self-forgiveness for a transgression against the partner leads to greater forgiveness of a subsequent partner transgression, and whether this, in turn, predicts greater relationship satisfaction. Study 1 showed that self-forgiveness p...

Forgiveness has received widespread attention among psychologists from social, personality, clinical, developmental, and organizational perspectives alike. Despite great progress, the forgiveness literature has witnessed few attempts at empirical integration. Toward this end, we meta-analyze results from 175 studies and 26,006 participants to examine the correlates of interpersonal forgiveness ...

Sincere apologies can motivate forgiveness; however, there are differing theoretical perspectives on the mechanism by which this occurs. The empathy model of forgiveness suggests empathy mediates the link between apologies and forgiveness. Alternatively, attribution theory suggests that the apology–forgiveness link is best explained by attributions of behavioral stability. The empathy and attri...

Given the positive benefits associated with interpersonal forgiveness, the current investigation examined the tendency to forgive in romantic relationships. Two studies tested the hypothesis that the tendency to forgive mediates the association between attachment models of self and other and relationship satisfaction in dating (n1⁄4 184) and marital relationships (n1⁄4 96). In addition, the ext...

OBJECTIVES This study examines the relationship between interpersonal forgiveness and health for older Blacks and Whites. We outline a series of arguments concerning the following: (a) how forgiveness can affect health, (b) how forgiveness may be more protective for Blacks, and (c) how the relationship between forgiveness and health may vary by neighborhood deterioration. METHOD Two waves (20...