quickly /C0usually within an hour, leaving little time for a plausible offence and then true forgiveness to occur.
McCullough et al. (2003) observed that there were three types of forgiveness. Trend forgiveness is the gradual
decrease over time in unforgiveness. Temporal forgiveness consists of daily fluctuations in the measurement of
forgiveness due to mood or daily events. Forbearance /C0not forgiveness /C0is likely what is measured in labora-
tory situations. Forbearance is an initial reduction in unforgiveness. It might differ substantially from trend for-
giveness. Forbearance might be an immediate reduction due to decisional forgiveness pressured by the
immediacy of the lab experience. New research is needed to distinguish forbearance and decisional forgiveness
in laboratory settings. This begs for new assessment methods and instruments.
Partners are rarely studied in forgiveness research, yet forgiveness occurs in interpersonal context. In one
attempt to consider particular relationships, Paleari et al. (2009) created a measure of offence-specific couple
forgiveness, the Marital Offence-Specific Forgiveness Scale (MOFS). Behavioral coding has not been employed in
assessing couples’ interactions before and after forgiving, nor has behavioral coding of behavior been used in
research on other relationships.
Overall, the field of forgiveness assessment could benefit by participation of multi-disciplinary research teams
that can bring other assessment methods to bear on studying forgiveness. Because such multi-disciplinary teams
are increasingly employed in this era of progressively complex psychological science, we are optimistic that new
developments of assessment methods will be forthcoming.
Unaddressed Areas of Theory and Conceptualization
Researchers need to differentiate forgiveness from its alternatives ( Wade & Worthington, 2003 ). Research that
investigates the injustice gap ( Exline et al., 2003 ) and its narrowing through forgiveness or other ways /C0such as
receiving or seeing justice done, forbearance, or acceptance /C0would illuminate some of the benefits and costs of
forgiving versus its alternatives.
McCullough et al. (2003) made a case that state forgiveness should always be measured at least twice.
Only intervention research and McCullough’s own research program seems to have heeded this advice. Thus, a
time series of sequential measurement of forgiveness has not been exploited. Hall and Fincham (2007) studied
self-forgiveness over time, and McCullough et al. (2010) did the most thorough job of describing forgiveness of
others over time using a power curve (for a sample) and plotting individual variations as well.
We note in passing that many forgiveness instruments that assessed correlations of their scores with scores on
social desirability found low positive correlations in the order of .15 to .20, suggestive of discriminative validity.
Consistently, research into forgiveness and personality has shown positive correlations with agreeableness
(seeMullet, Neto, & Rivie `re, 2005 , for a review). Future researchers might differentiate between social desirability
that might contaminate the assessment of forgiveness (because it is simply giving a researcher what the
researcher wants to hear) and social connectedness that is an integral part of forgiveness.
What is not yet present in the literature? Studies that triangulate on the experience of forgiveness using self-
report, central nervous system measures, peripheral nervous system measures, and behavioral manifestations,
have not been done. When researchers have used non-self-report methods, they have usually combined them
with at most one self-report measure and used no other modalities.
Few measures that might serve as psychometrically sound intervention-relevant measures have been fully
developed. Research measures usually have different standards for reliability and validity than do clinical instru-
ments ( DeVellis, 2011 ). Generally, research instruments are concerned more with finding group differences and
statistically significant relationships within groups of people. But clinicians are interested in finding accurate
assessment for diagnosis and prognosis (and sometimes for tracking treatment). Assessments for diagnosis and
prognosis must have high estimated reliabilities, low standard errors of measurement, and be associated with
mental health outcomes. In addition, they need to reflect clinical changes throughout the progress of psychother-
apy. Initially, clients will often complete long questionnaires when they are trying to illuminate their distress.
However, during and at the end of psychotherapy, usually clients will not invest the time in completing long
instruments. Thus, for use during and at the end of treatment, instruments must be as short as possible to pro-
mote client compliance.
For clinical diagnosis, the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI) has 60 items and is good for diagnosis).
However, it is too long (60 items), and it is likely not to be completed at the end of forgiveness therapy or at the
end of a brief treatment module on forgiveness of one or two sessions. Furthermore, the EFI is too long and is
proprietary (hence too costly) to satisfy many researchers who are not grant funded. On the other hand, the
TRIM, RFS, EFS, and DFS /C0all with Cronbach alphas at .8 to .9 /C0are good for research and as in-progress and
ending psychotherapy measures but have estimated reliabilities too low for clinical diagnoses.499 FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
IV. INTERPERSONAL STYLES