This study assessed mental and physical health correlates of dispositional forgiveness and religious coping responses in 213 help-seeking veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Controlling for age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, combat exposure, and hostility, the results indicated that difficulty forgiving oneself and negative religious coping were related to depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptom severity. Difficulty forgiving others was associated with depression and PTSD symptom severity, but not anxiety. Positive religious coping was associated with PTSD symptom severity in this sample. Further investigations that delineate the relevance of forgiveness and religious coping in PTSD may enhance current clinical assessment and treatment approaches.

This study assessed exposure effects on liking, self-reported affect, and physiology in response to music. Music stimuli varied in valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low), in a 2 )/2 within-subjects design (N 0/67). Six quasi-randomly ordered, counterbalanced exposures to music produced response polarisation. With exposure, negative music was liked even less, whereas positive music was liked even more. Zygomatic (smile) EMG also showed response polarisation: with exposure, participants smiled most during positive arousing music, and least during negative arousing music. Heart rate, corrugator (brow) and orbicularis oculi (under the eye) EMG reactivity patterns were consistent with possible increased fluency in processing the music with exposure. We address theoretical accounts of exposure and response polarisation and suggest directions for future research.

People are more forgiving toward transgressors if they see themselves as capable of committing similar offenses, as demonstrated in 7 studies. Methods included hypothetical scenarios, actual recalled offenses, individual and group processes, and correlational and experimental designs. Three factors mediated the link between personal capability and forgiveness: seeing the other's offense as less severe, greater empathic understanding, and perceiving oneself as similar to the transgressor. In terms of predicting forgiveness, it was important that people's own offenses were similar to the target offense in terms of both severity and type. The personal capability effect was independent of other established predictors of forgiveness and was more pronounced among men than women.

The startle reflex, facial electromyogram (EMG), and autonomic nervous system responses were examined during imagery varying in affective valence and arousal. Subjects (N = 48) imagined affective situations during tone-cued 8-s trials. Startle blink magnitudes were larger and latencies faster during negatively valent than during positively valent conditions and during high-arousal than during low-arousal conditions. Greatest heart rate acceleration and fastest and largest skin conductance responses to startle probes occurred during high-arousal imagery. Zygomatic and orbicularis oculi facial muscle activities were higher during high-arousal imagery, whereas corrugator muscle activity was higher during low-arousal imagery. Zygomatic and corrugator activity also varied with emotional valence. The startle and facial EMG responses are most parsimoniously organized by the negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) dimensions, respectively. This NA/PA framework integrates previous research, dimensional theories of emotional behavior, and physiological assessment of pathological emotion.

This experiment assessed the emotional self-reports and physiology of justice outcomes and forgiveness responses to a common crime, using a three Justice (retributive, restorative, no justice) · 2 Forgiveness (forgiveness, none) repeated-measures design. Participants (27 males, 29 females) imagined their residence was burglarized, followed by six counterbalanced justice-forgiveness outcomes. Imagery of justice-especially restorative-and forgiveness each reduced unforgiving motivations and negative emotion (anger, fear), and increased prosocial and positive emotion (empathy, gratitude). Imagery of granting forgiveness (versus not) was associated with less heart rate reactivity and better recovery; less negative emotion expression at the brow (corrugator EMG); and less aroused expression at the eye (lower orbicularis oculi EMG when justice was absent). When forgiveness was not imagined, justice-physiology effects emerged: signs of cardiovascular stress (rate pressure products) were lower for retributive versus no justice; and sympathetic nervous system responding (skin conductance) was calmer for restorative versus retributive justice.