Predicting Forgiveness for an Interpersonal Offense Before and After Treatment: The Role of Religious Commitment, Religious Affiliation, and Trait Forgivingness

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Predicting Forgiveness for an Interpersonal Offense Before and After Treatment: The Role of Religious Commitment, Religious Affiliation, and Trait Forgivingness Powered By Docstoc
					Journal of Psychology and Christianity                                      Copyright 2008 Christian Association for Psychological Studies
2008, Vol. 27, No. 4, 358-367                                                                                            ISSN 0733-4273

   Predicting Forgiveness for an Interpersonal
    Offense Before and After Treatment: The
    Role of Religious Commitment, Religious
       Affiliation, and Trait Forgivingness
                Nathaniel G. Wade          Julia E. Meyer     Daniel B. Goldman                     Brian C. Post
                                                  Iowa State University

          Although a central value of Christianity is forgiveness, previous research is mixed on whether commit-
       ment to and affiliation with Christianity is related to the ability to forgive specific offenders. This relation-
       ship might be particularly salient in situations where people are seeking treatment to overcome past
       offenses. Therefore, we analyzed archival data (N = 249) from two forgiveness intervention studies to
       examine the relationship between religious commitment, religious affiliation, and forgiveness-related vari-
       ables. Results indicated that religious affiliation was related to rumination about the offense prior to treat-
       ment and that, for Christians, religious commitment was related to change in revenge following treatment.
       The disposition to forgive fully mediated the relationship between religious commitment and revenge and
       religious commitment and rumination, but only for Christians.

  As illustrated by this special section on for-                   religious individuals, therefore, are proposed to
giveness, the psychological study of forgiveness                   more directly determine behavior. A later elabo-
has received some considerable attention over                      ration on this model suggested that under specif-
the last few decades. As this area of research                     ic circumstances an individual’s religious beliefs
has expanded, numerous definitions of forgive-                     may impact their forgiveness of others (Wor-
ness have emerged. One way of understanding                        thington, Kurusu, McCullough, & Sandage,
forgiveness is as a two-part process of reducing                   1996). Individuals who are highly committed to
negative emotions, such as bitterness, and pro-                    their faith may forgive more readily as their faith
moting positive feelings, such as compassion,                      commitments may encourage strong adherence
towards an offender (Wade, Worthington, &                          to religious teachings about forgiveness. In con-
Meyer, 2005). Identifying the psychosocial pre-                    trast, for people with moderate or low commit-
dictors of forgiveness defined in this way would                   ment, religion is not expected to impact their
be useful for understanding both the normal                        desire or ability to forgive because religion is not
processes of forgiveness and the ways profes-                      a central part of their lives.
sionals might intervene to help people strug-                         In addition to religious commitment, defined
gling with forgiveness.                                            broadly to include commitment to any religious
                                                                   worldview, affiliation with a specific religion
Religion and Forgiveness                                           might also play an important role in forgiveness.
  Given the long history of interest in forgive-                   On the one hand, some scholars have argued
ness by most religious groups, some researchers                    that most of the major world religions teach the
have proposed that individual religious commit-                    value of forgiveness for interpersonal conflict
ment might be an important predictor of for-                       and hurt (McCullough & Worthington, 1999). On
giveness (e.g., McCullough & Worthington,                          the other hand, some have argued that there are
1999). Worthington (1988) has argued that high-                    important differences in beliefs and practices
ly religious people evaluate their experiences                     regarding forgiveness across different religious
according to their worldviews, which are dictat-                   traditions. For example, Marty (1998) has argued
ed by their religious beliefs. Values of highly                    that although many religious traditions teach the
                                                                   value of forgiveness, none place as much