Forgiveness: Definitions, Perspectives, Contexts and Correlates
Lijo KJ*
Department of Psychology, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Cochin, Kerala, India
*Corresponding author: Kochakadan Joy Lijo, Department of Psychology, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Cochin, Kerala, India, Tel: + 91-9539508315; E-mail:
lijosjoy86@gmail.com
Received date: January 17, 2018; Accepted date: June 13, 2018; Published date: June 20, 2018
Copyright: ©2018 Kochakadan Joy Lijo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In social science, synthesis of literature is also an essential activity which informs the scholars and researchers
about the recent developments related to constructs. The present review article discusses the issues related to
forgiveness (and unforgiveness) with respect to definition, perspectives, contexts, and correlates. This review tries to
enumerate the struggle of the concept-forgiveness to get a shape; contextual relevance and to find its associates.
This theoretical exploration will help researchers and practitioners to posit and address the concept forgiveness with
its full essence.
Keywords: Forgiveness; Unforgiveness
Introduction
People adopt a variety of responses in the face of interpersonal
transgressions such as active or passive retaliation, holding grudges,
and denying the seriousness of the oense. It is likely that the
unforgiving responses to wrongdoer are the habitual tendencies. e
negative reaction to wrongdoer and resistance to forgive are learned as
part of survival need or power need of human beings. But the human
being has the humane capacity to overcome this ‘habitual barrier'
through compassion and forgiveness. From the humanistic angle,
letting go or forgiveness is a quality of growth seeking individual. In
other words, human beings have the capacity to choose forgiveness,
instead of the negative reaction to the wrongdoer. is is how the earth
has survived so far [1]. Major religions like Christianity, Judaism,
Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism have celebrated the virtue-forgiveness
saying ‘committing mistakes is the natural and humane, but forgiving
is divine’ [2]. Scholars in behavioral science have identied the
personal and interpersonal benets of forgiveness and the cognitive,
emotional, motivational, and social dimensions of forgiveness. e
present article has four sections namely; denitions, theories, contexts,
and correlates of forgiveness.
Dening Forgiveness
Dening forgiveness has importance ranging from nding out the
antecedence/predictors to recommending the method of intervention
and application of intervention strategies. Scholars have tried to rene
the denition of forgiveness based on their conceptual and empirical
works. ere are broadly two approaches. e rst approach tried to
dierentiate forgiveness from unforgiving actions and outcomes, and
the second approach tried to explain the processes and outcome of
forgiveness.
Walrond-Skinner [3] has proposed a topology of seven types of
forgiveness. ey are
• Premature instantaneous forgiveness: An unauthentic form of
forgiveness indicated by denying or forgetting the transgression;
• Arrested forgiveness: e forgiveness is denied between the victim
and wrongdoer;
• Conditional forgiveness: e acceptance of forgiveness under some
conditions like apology, acceptance, and change in unacceptable
behavior;
• Pseudo or mutual forgiveness: e process in which immature
forgiveness is given or accepted in the necessity to restore the pre-
conict relation;
• Collusive forgiveness: e process of avoiding conict or
opposition even when there is an unsolved severe injustice;
• Repetitious forgiveness: e successive, but incomplete attempts to
stop relational transgression; and
• Authentic process forgiveness: e unconditional, self-regarding,
altruistic, pro-social motive to avoid revenge for the good of self
and the oender.
Enright and Coyle [4] have dierentiated some concepts from
forgiveness that are found to be similar to forgiveness. ey are
pardoning, condoning, excusing, forgetting, and denial. Enright,
Santos, and Al-Mabuk [5] had proposed six types of forgiveness. ey
are:
1. Revengeful forgiveness: Forgiveness aer revenge;
2. Restitutional forgiveness: To relieve guilt aer restoring the
relationship;
3. Exceptional forgiveness: Granted under social pressure;
4. Lawful Exceptional forgiveness; granted aer considering a moral
code or Authority;
5. Forgiveness for Social harmony: Granted to reduce the
established social harmony and Peace;
6. Forgiveness as an act and expression of unconditional love.
e above (rst) approach addresses more about what are various
types of forgiveness and non-forgiveness and their motives. e
proceeding section (second) approach denes forgiveness in terms of
what are the dynamics happening in both forgiver and wrongdoer and
what are the motives and outcome of the dynamics.
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ISSN: 2161-0487
Journal of Psychology &
Psychotherapy Lijo, J Psychol Psychother 2018, 8:3
DOI: 10.4172/2161-0487.1000342
Review Article Open Access
J Psychol Psychother, an open access journal
ISSN:2161-0487
Volume 8 • Issue 3 • 1000342
ompson et al. [6] dene forgiveness as freeing from a negative
attachment to the source that has transgressed against a person.
Enright and colleges [7] dened forgiveness as one's “willingness to
abandon one's right to resentment, negative judgment and indierent
behavior toward one who unjustly hurt us, while fostering the
undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and even love toward
him or her”. In the view of McCullough [8], forgiveness is a pro-social
motivation, which is expressed through the decreased desire to avoid
the transgressing person and to harm or seek revenge toward that
individual and increased desire to act positively toward the same
person. Finally, the more rened denitions of forgiveness include two
aspects absence of negative emotion and presence of positive emotion
towards the oender [9]. Forgiveness also includes the expression of
altruism and moral response from a victim that seeks to overcome
injustice with goodness. In forgiveness, a pro-social change happens to
the victim’s thought, emotions and behavior towards a wrongdoer.
eories of Forgiveness
According to McCullough [10] forgiveness is a set of motivational
changes where an individual becomes decreasingly motivated to take
revenge against an oender; decreasingly motivated to avoid the
oender, and increasingly motivated by goodwill for, and a desire to
reconcile with the oender, despite the oender's harmful actions.
Before him, there are scholars proposed theories on forgiveness. ere
are three dierent perspectives on forgiveness which include family
therapy perspective, psychodynamic perspective, and cognitive
perspective.
In family life, forgiveness has an important role in maintaining
independence and relationships among family members. It was
Hargrave [11] who proposed a theory of forgiveness for family therapy.
e core of this theory is relational ethics. He conceptualizes that the
process of forgiveness is through exoneration and behavior. ey
empower the one who victimized injustice to take responsibility from
one who caused hurt. In exoneration, there are two things- insight and
understanding. Insight allows one to recognize and alter the
destructive pattern of thought and behavior. Understanding allows the
acceptance of limitation of wrongdoer without removing the
responsibility. Granting forgiveness (Behaviour) has two stages. ey
are the opportunity for compensation which is the chance to
compensate for the damage happened due to the oender and an overt
act which includes open discussion wrongdoer about the mistake and
restoring the relationship.
Under psychodynamic tradition Kaufman [12] and Todd [13] have
explained forgiveness. Kaufman [12] connected forgiveness with
courage. According to him, rage occurs when an individual's freedom
for desire and action is restricted. Forgiveness helps an individual to
accept themselves beyond the restriction and resulted failures in
personal and interpersonal contexts. Todd [13] explained self-
forgiveness and forgiveness to others as an archetypal experience
under the Jungian system. Self-forgiveness and forgiveness to others is
an integration of archetypal theme one's ‘shadow' into transcending
self. According to him, forgiveness is used as a reparative instrument to
confront and be relieved of guilt. In the application part of this theory,
the therapist plays the role of the priest who hears confession and
pronounces freedom from all injuries and guilt. Forgiveness is a
mechanism to confront and get rid of guilt.
Enright, Santos, and Al-Mabuk [5] have explained forgiveness
through a cognitive paradigm. For that, they distinguished justice
morality and forgiveness morality. Justice morality represents
providing one's due, equity and fairness. But forgiveness morality
means, though knowing the right to revenge, one forgoes the right for
taking revenge. Here to get compassion is not the right of a wrongdoer,
but it is a gi given by the victim of transgression. e cognitive
framework of forgiveness is expanded using logotherapy by Gassin and
Enright [14]. ey proposed that forgiveness and existential meaning
promote positive psychological adjustment. Finding meaning in
forgiveness follows the acceptance of pain.
Contexts of Forgiveness
ere are three contexts for forgiveness. ey are (1) forgiving to
another person, (2) forgiving to oneself, and (3) forgiveness to
situation or circumstance.
Forgiveness to another person is the most discussed context in
which relationship between two or more than two individual is aected
due to verbal, behavioral, emotional or perceived transgression. ere
are models explaining how does forgiveness occur on these occasions.
In the case of interpersonal transgressions like breaking the trust of life
partner, friend or some important family member, Gordon, et al. [15]
have proposed a forgiveness model. According to this model, the rst
step is promoting a non-distorted, realistic appraisal of the relationship
between the two people. e second step is to encourage them to break
the bond of their ruminative aect towards the oender. e nal step
is to assist the victim to remove or lessen his/her desire to punish the
transgressing friend or partner. Worthington [16] proposed another
method called REACH (Recall, Empathy, Altruism, Commit and
Hold) for helping couples or partners. e steps are recalling oense,
promote empathy between the victim and wrongdoer, oer forgiveness
as an altruistic gi to each other, open verbal commitment to forgive,
and hold on forgiveness.
ere are factors which facilitate interpersonal forgiveness. ey are
nature of relationship perceived relationship value and intensity of
victimization. Forgiveness is a cognitive mechanism of human beings
developed in the process of natural selection and it is very essential for
humans to restore valuable social relationships. Perceived relationship
value plays a role in forgiveness [17]. Relationship value and risk for
future exploitation were found to be the predictors of forgiveness.
Forgiveness was highly predictable when high relationship value and
low risk of future exploitation were combined in the prediction.
Attachment pattern was associated with are. Secure attachment pattern
can predict dispositional forgiveness and reduces rumination [18].
Always the nature of relationship plays an important role, between
parent and child, the forgiveness is unconditional, easy and immediate
compared to other types of relationships. So closeness/nature of blood
relationship is a good predictor. Another factor is the intensity of
mistakes committed and the impact of the oense. If the oense is
small in its impact, forgiveness is behavior granted.
Forgiving to oneself is the most eortful form of forgiveness. In
some occasions, individuals feel anger to oneself when any of their
behavior- verbal or nonverbal, leads to any signicant self-defeat or
non-correctable consequences. Self-forgiveness is dened as a process
of releasing resentment towards oneself for a perceived transgression
or wrongdoing [19]. Hall and Fincham [1] said that it is more dicult
to live without self-forgiveness than without forgiving to others. e
reason is that lack of self-forgiveness damages the person himself
leading to depression and suicide and not forgiving others will only
aect the external positive interaction and adaptation. When the self of
Citation: Lijo KJ (2018) Forgiveness: Definitions, Perspectives, Contexts and Correlates. J Psychol Psychother 8: 342. doi:
10.4172/2161-0487.1000342
Page 2 of 5
J Psychol Psychother, an open access journal
ISSN:2161-0487
Volume 8 • Issue 3 • 1000342
an individual is viewed as powerless and worthless, the shame and guilt
will dominate the situation and create the situation that ‘I did a bad
thing’ and ‘I am a bad person’. If shame is dominating the feeling will
be that ‘I am a bad person. If guilt is dominating the feeling will be that
‘I did a bad thing’. Here, dealing with shame is more dicult than guilt
because shame is a generalized view than guilt [20].
Interventions for self-forgiveness help individuals to analyze the
events without bias; accept the role of internal-external agencies and let
the hard feelings go without harming the self and psychological
wellness. Forgiveness practitioners actually help clients to understand
how their self-absorbed thoughts and feelings interfere with positive
living [21]. ere are self-compassion techniques which help one to
accept imperfections and mistakes and direct compassion towards
oneself. Some of them are Compassionate Mind Training (CMT),
Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC; [22]) and Loving-kindness
Meditation.
Forgiveness is not only applied to individuals but also for situations
including natural disasters like earthquake, tornado, ooding or
disasters in personal life like the death of important people or chronic
illness. ese situations make people angry and hopeless.
Unforgiveness towards such situations make an individual hopeless
and gradually develop a negative attitude towards outside world. A
good example is for is having unforgiveness towards God. e
unforgiveness towards God was associated with negative emotions and
diculty in experiencing forgiving by God led to anxiety and mood
disorders. And the feeling of not forgiven by God was found to be an
emotional problem [23].
Correlates of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is one among several warmth-based virtues. Its
avoidance or acceptance has physical, psychological, social and
spiritual impacts. Forgiveness leads to physical and psychological
health through improved positive mood and interpersonal
relationships [24]. When one is not forgiving he/she might experience
negative emotions such as resentment, bitterness, hatred, hostility,
residual anger, and fear. is may lead to individual and social
dysfunctioning and psychological discomfort.
e absence of forgiveness contribute to psychological tension and
may reduce the levels of psychological well-being. Failure to forgive
others to whom one feels a strong commitment elicited reduced levels
of life satisfaction and self-esteem as well as higher levels of other
negative eects [25]. A study of a large sample of 324 undergraduate
students by Maltby et al. [26] reported that failure to forgive oneself
led/related to experience neuroticism, depression, and anxiety; and
failure to forgive others leads to social introversion among men (low
extraversion scores) and social-pathology among women (social
dysfunction, psychoticism). ere are studies which reported that the
diculty to forgive is related to schizophrenia and PTSD [26-29].
Researchers have reported that forgiveness is the replacement of
negative unforgiving emotions with positive emotions, positive aect,
self-esteem, and it fosters compassion and positive responses to the
oender [30,31]. Forgiving to oneself and others are positively related
to life satisfaction and negatively related to psychological distress [32].
Forgiveness is also likely to promote mental health indirectly through
social support, interpersonal functioning, and health behavior [33].
Forgiveness has found to be positively correlated with individual's
resilience. ere are studies reporting the relationship between
forgiveness and resilience in addition to other positive eects [30].
Forgiveness makes a smooth pathway for resilient individuals. A study
investigated the relationship between resilience, forgiveness and anger
expression using a sample of 70 adolescents. e ndings showed that
signicant relationships exist between several forms of adolescent
resilience and forgiveness as well as between some forms of adolescent
resilience and anger expression. e ndings imply that the constructs
of adolescent resilience and forgiveness have commonalities that can
inuence how adolescents express anger [34]. Studies conducted in
India among graduate students and adolescents have found that
compared to the absence of negative feeling towards wrongdoer, the
presence positive feeling toward the wrongdoer is signicantly
correlated resilience and grit [35,36].
Forgiveness is not only a positive indicator of mental health but also
of physiological health. A study has found that unforgiving thoughts
not only lead to negative emotional experiences, and but also make
negative physiological eects like higher corrugator (brow)
electromyogram (EMG), skin conductance, heart rate, and blood
pressure changes. e forgiving thoughts enhance perceived control
and lower physiological stress responses in individuals. e ndings
also revealed that chronic unforgiving responses may erode health
whereas forgiving responses may enhance it [37].
Studies have found out that among patients with terminal illness
forgiveness helps them to adjust to their conditions. Another among 81
women treated for breast cancer revealed that self-forgiving attitude
and spirituality can negatively predict mood disturbance and positively
predict the quality of life [38,39]. Forgiveness and health are involved
in both direct and indirect relationships. Forgiveness forbids revenge
and encourages strong positive love-based emotions. Forgiveness also
involves a variety of physiological processes. e physiological changes
involved in forgiveness are likely to contribute to a direct eect on
mental health and well-being of the individual.
A survey of a very large sample of 2616 female and male twins
reports that forgiveness reduces the risk of externalizing disorders such
as nicotine dependence, alcohol dependence, drug abuse or
dependence, and adult antisocial behavior. Unrevengefulness reduces
the risk for internalizing disorders such as major depression,
generalized anxiety disorder, phobia, panic disorder, and bulimia
nervosa [40]. Another study examined the relationship between
forgiveness and a variety of immunological, psychophysiological and
other physiological conditions in a sample of 68 adults. e ndings
showed that higher level of forgiveness is an indicator of healthy habits
like less smoking, lower anxiety, lower anger, lower depression, and
more task coping. People with higher levels of forgiveness had lower
hematocrit levels, lower white blood cell counts, and higher TX PA
levels. Lower forgiveness levels were found to be related to higher T-
helper/cytotoxic cell ratios [41].
ere are certain personality traits correlated with forgiveness. e
empirical nding has pointed out that people inclined to forgive others
tended to be more agreeable, emotionally stable, spiritual and religious
compared to people who are not inclined to forgive oenders.
A series of studies involving large samples of undergraduate
students showed that forgiveness was positively correlated with
positive and pro-social traits like agreeableness, empathic concern,
extraversion and perspective taking, and negatively with neuroticism,
trait anger, hostility, depression, and fear. Another notable nding was
a strong negative association between forgiveness and the tendency to
ruminate vengefully [30].
Citation: Lijo KJ (2018) Forgiveness: Definitions, Perspectives, Contexts and Correlates. J Psychol Psychother 8: 342. doi:
10.4172/2161-0487.1000342
Page 3 of 5
J Psychol Psychother, an open access journal
ISSN:2161-0487
Volume 8 • Issue 3 • 1000342
A study by Maltby and Day [42] reported that forgiveness is
negatively associated with a neurotic defense style [42]. Another study
among a sample of 320 subjects reported that measures such as
forgiveness of self, others, the likelihood, the presence of positive
forgiveness, and the absence of negative forgiveness were negatively
related to neuroticism-coping factor and the presence of positive
feeling towards wrongdoer related to extraversion-coping factor. ese
ndings imply that forgiveness predicts personality-coping factors.
And they intron determines the mental health quality [42].
e ndings of another study revealed that when the victim
perceived their transgressors as highly agreeable, they had the level of
cortisol lowered and forgiveness behavior increased. At the same time,
the agreeableness and neuroticism of the victims found less association
with their cortisol level and forgiveness [43].
ere are studies which examined the relationship between age and
gender with forgiveness. A survey of 1,423 respondents focused on age
dierences in levels of multiple forms of forgiveness. e middle-aged
and elders showed higher levels of these forms of forgiveness than
young adults since forgiveness is a good predictor of mental and
physical health [32]. Gender dierences in levels of empathy and
forgiveness have been investigated. e ndings revealed that women
compared to men were more empathetic. No gender dierence existed
in the case of forgiveness. Among men, forgiveness was inuenced by
the feeling of empathy [44].
Conclusion
Psychology–the science of wellness did not give much importance
to the personal strengths of forgiveness and gratitude. It happened
because the eld metal health was busy in dealing with illness and
ignored them with the populist notion that they both are the
diplomatic personal attributes which will help an individual to survive
or avoid adversities or problems. It was Positive Psychology which
advocated that forgiveness and gratitude are the best examples of
human' creativity and intelligence and humane attributes with
personal, interpersonal and spiritual benets. anks to positive
psychology for highlighting forgiveness as mental health predictor
otherwise the strength Forgiveness would have taken much time to the
forefront of mental health science. e present article did nothing but a
consolidation of philosophical and empirical support of the strength of
Forgiveness, with the aim of creating a background for further
exploration by researchers and application by practitioners.
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Citation: Lijo KJ (2018) Forgiveness: Definitions, Perspectives, Contexts and Correlates. J Psychol Psychother 8: 342. doi:
10.4172/2161-0487.1000342
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ISSN:2161-0487
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