Participants wrote 2 narratives that described an incident in which they angered or hurt someone (offender) or in which someone angered or hurt them (victim) and the offense was forgiven or not forgiven. Victims portrayed the offense as continuing (open), and offenders portrayed the offense as over (closed). Forgiveness narratives portrayed offenses as closed and with positive outcomes; however, for some victims, forgiveness coincided with continued anger, suggesting incomplete forgiveness. Dispositional empathy was associated with more benign interpretations of offenses, and situational empathy (e.g., for the offender) was associated with victims' forgiveness. In contrast, offenders' empathy for victims was associated with less self-forgiveness. Thus, both victim or offender role and forgiveness must be considered to understand narratives of interpersonal offenses.

We examined the interaction of cognitive styles and life events in predicting the depressive and hypomanic mood swings of 43 undergraduates meeting criteria for a subsyndromal mood disorder (i.e., cyclothymia, dysthymia, or hypomania) or no lifetime diagnosis. Participants completed symptom, cognitive style, and life events measures on three separate occasions as the different mood states characteristic of their subsyndromal disorder naturally occurred. Normal controls were assessed in three separate normal mood states at times yoked to participants in the three disorder groups. All groups’ attributional styles and dysfunctional attitudes remained stable across large changes in mood and symptomatology and cyclothymics’ cognitive styles were as negative as those of dysthymics. Moreover, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that participants’ attributional styles, as measured in a normal mood state (Time 1), in interaction with intervening life events predicted prospectively their depressive symptom changes at Times 2 and 3 and their hypomanic symptom changes at Time 2. These findings provide support for the cognitive vulnerability-stress hypothesis of the Hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989) and suggest that the logic of the Hopelessness theory’s vulnerability-stress hypothesis extends to the prediction of manic/hypomanic symptoms.

We experimentally investigated the effects of arousal, offense removal ("making amends"), and apology following a scripted laboratory offense involving undeserved failure feedback. Self-report and behavioral measures of forgiveness and retaliation were influenced differentially by the manipulations. Retaliation was influenced only by the presence of an apology. Consistent with some previous findings, experimenters who committed the offense and apologized were evaluated more negatively than when they did not apologize. The relationship between apology and retaliation was mediated by participants' blame directed at the experimenter. Forgiveness was more complex, and varied depending on arousal, offense removal, and apology. In the high arousal condition, forgiveness was least likely following an "insincere apology" in which the offender did not make amends for the wrong when apologizing. These results are interpreted in terms of a two-stage model of forgiveness in which different variables influence revenge and forgiveness.Although forgiveness has long been conceptualized within the frameworks of theology (Rye et al., 2000) and philosophy (Enright, Gassin, &

Is there a core set of key concepts that defines a common language for introductory psychology? A content analysis of the glossaries of 10 major introductory psychology textbooks identified 2,505 different terms and concepts. Only 64 items (< 3%) were common to all glossaries; approximately half (49%) appeared in only 1 glossary. Ratings of item importance by a national sample of 191 instructors indicated moderate agreement between instructors and authors as to what constitutes a key concept. These results, and those of previous studies, pose a serious dilemma for those who wish to follow the prescription that "less is more" in content coverage in the introductory course. Just what should that "less" be?