The psychology of forgiveness originated from the creative and important work on the development of justice initiated by Piaget in 1932 and extended by Kohlberg in 1969. The scientific study of forgiveness is quite new, having emerged in print in 1989, with an examination of the developmental progression in children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ thinking about the necessary conditions for them to offer forgiveness to another person. In this chapter, the authors first review the definition of forgiveness, followed by this early cognitive work. They then turn to a discussion of the measurement of forgiveness correlates of forgiveness. The practical application of this construct is seen in the development of forgiveness therapy and forgiveness education, which the authors discuss in light of the empirical findings. Future directions for forgiveness studies are considered.

Objective: Forgiveness Therapy is proposed as a novel approach to rehabilitation for men in a maximum-security correctional institution to alleviate psychological compromises. Method:In a two-tiered study, volunteer participants within a correctional institution (N = 103) were asked to report past experiences of abuse and unjust treatment prior to their first crime and were measured on anger, anxiety, depression, hope and forgiveness. Twenty four of the most clinically compromised participants were selected from this initial assessment, with pairs first matched on certain characteristics and then randomly assigned to either experimental or control group interventions followed by a cross-over design (N = 9 in each group at the study's end). Experimental participants received 24 weeks of Forgiveness Therapy. Control group participants received 24 weeks of an alternative treatment followed by Forgiveness Therapy. Dependent variables included anger, anxiety, depression, forgiveness, hope, self-esteem and empathy.Results: Ninety percent of 103 participants reported moderate to severe abuse in childhood or adolescence. Data showed an inverse relationship between forgiveness and anger, anxiety and depression. In the Forgiveness Therapy, anger, anxiety, depression, empathy and forgiveness were statistically significant favouring both experimental groups. These results remained at the 6-month follow-up.Conclusions: Forgiveness Therapy is shown to be effective for correctional rehabilitation in healing clinical psychological compromise and in promoting positive psychological well-being in men within a maximum-security facility.

Abstract. This study reports the process of item reduction of the Enright Forgiveness Inventory – EFI, a measure of interpersonal forgiveness, from 60 to 30 items for a more practical assessment of this construct. Data from the US were used in the creation of the new measure and applied to seven nations: Austria, Brazil, Israel, South Korea, Norway, Pakistan, and Taiwan. The question was: do the best EFI-30 items from the US have discriminative power in seven other cultures? Results provided the psychometric evidence for the reduced version of the EFI-30 across cultures. The discrimination values are positive, suggesting that the selected items have the sensitivity to differentiate accurately people with different degrees of forgiveness and good psychometric properties of internal consistency.

Until recently, researchers operationalized and measured the psychological construct of forgiveness at the individual, rather than the group, level. Social psychologists started applying forgiveness to groups and examining the role intergroup forgiveness may have in conflict resolution and peace efforts. Initial attempts to define and measure forgiveness at the group level either assumed individual and group capacities were the same, or insufficiently described what intergroup forgiveness meant. We developed a new measure of intergroup forgiveness, and a novel group administration process, that operationalized the construct in a philosophically coherent way. Our conceptualization of intergroup forgiveness was rooted in what groups, as opposed to the individuals who compose them, have the capacity to do. We collected data on the psychometric properties of the measure with 595 participants in three different geographic and cultural settings. We assessed the factor structure, internal consistency, and validity of the measure. We also assessed a novel group-based method of administering the measure to better understand the relationship between group based reports and self-reports of intergroup forgiveness. The factor structure of the measure was supported, and the measure had strong internal consistency, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. The group administration process revealed important group dynamics and was not statistically different than a standard self-report administration; this finding has important implications for research and practice.

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