This study examined the role of automaticity in forgiving a real-life offense. As an alternative to self-report, an Implicit Association Test (IAT) of forgiveness was developed. Implicit (IAT-measured) and explicit (self-reported) forgiveness predicted shorter response times of state forgiveness ratings. The forgiveness IAT was highly reliable, moderately stable over time, and demonstrated incr...

Research has shown that a factor in a victim's forgiveness of an offender is the victim's ability to make more positive, or at least less negative, attributions of the offender's behavior and that perspective-taking can be a factor in facilitating that process. Self-enhancing humor has been found to be positively correlated with perspective-taking empathy and aggressive humor found to be negati...

There is growing recognition of the severe, adverse long-term effects that bullying behaviors have, on the victims or on bullies. Although there are many existing anti-bullying programs that are designed to counteract both the behaviors and their potential long-term negative effects, forgiveness education programs may also be used to help create a positive school climate in which bullies can ta...

Forgiveness is a variable closely related to religiousness and spirituality that has been hypothesized to be protective of mental and physical health. However, we do not clearly understand which aspects of forgiveness are most clearly associated with health outcomes, and the conditions under which these relationships occur. This study used national probability data to systematically examine age...

Decisional forgiveness is a behavioral intention to act less negatively and more positively toward an offender. Emotional forgiveness is a process in which positive otheroriented emotions replace unforgiving emotions. We present five studies, involving N=832 participants, to (a) develop the Decisional Forgiveness Scale (DFS) and Emotional Forgiveness Scale (EFS; Studies 1 & 2), and (b) assess i...

A meta–analysis was conducted with 53 articles reporting 70 studies that addressed gender and forgiveness. The mean d was .28 indicating that females are more forgiving than males. Potential methodological moderators were examined: (a) type of sample, (b) target of forgiveness, (c) trait, state, or familial/marital forgiveness, (d) actual versus hypothetical transgressions, (e) measurement moda...

The present system for reparation of very large oil accidents at sea neither gives incentives to take efficient care, nor allow for compensation of all damages. The reason is that the magnitudes of the accidents that we study are so big that the total assets of the injurer are not sufficient to pay for all damages. That is, strict liability for the injurer does not supply incentives enough for ...

ALTHOUGH THERE IS STILL CONSIDERABLE DEBATE about definitions of forgiveness (Worthington, 1998), some commonality regarding the psychological constituents of the process of forgiveness is emerging from intervention models designed to promote forgiveness. All of those models focus on the victim’s development of empathy toward the perpetrator as a necessary step in forgiveness (Doyle, 1999; Enri...

Experimental evidence suggests that when people are transgressed against interpersonally, they often react by experiencing unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is conceptualized as a stress reaction. Forgiveness is one (of many) ways people reduce unforgiveness. Forgiveness is conceptualized as an emotional juxtaposition of positive emotions (i.e., empathy, sympathy, compassion, or love) against the ne...

To examine potential causal relations between forgiveness and marital quality a sample of married couples (N1⁄4 91) provided data regarding forgiveness and marital quality on two occasions separated by a 12-month interval. Structural equation modeling was used to examine direction of effects. For women, paths emerged from forgiveness to marital quality and vice versa. For men, the direction of ...