The Interplay between Divine, Victim, and Self-forgiveness: The Relationship between Three Types of Forgiveness and Psychological Outcomes

Abstract

It is conceivable that one’s level of self-forgiveness is likely to be influenced by the extent to which one feels forgiven by God. Also, self-forgiveness, especially when the self-offense involves wronging another, is likely to be influenced by the extent to which one feels forgiven by the victim. Therefore, this study was aimed at simultaneously examining the interplay between divine, victim, and self-forgiveness as well as their effects on psychological outcomes. In Study 1, we examined the relative strength of divine and victim forgiveness as predictors of self-forgiveness and found that divine and victim forgiveness predicted self-forgiveness independently from each other. In Study 2, we examined the unique effects of three types of forgiveness on psychological outcomes and found that while all three types of forgiveness are associated with each other, after controlling for the other two types of forgiveness, self-forgiveness alone predicted anger, anxiety, and depression. A further analysis showed that self-forgiveness mediated the relationship between divine and victim forgiveness and psychological outcomes. In other words, divine and victim forgiveness contribute to self-forgiveness, which in turn lead to better psychological outcomes.

Couple healing from infidelity: A grounded theory study

“…The time and effort required to achieve this level of forgiveness supports Enright and Fitzgibbonss’ (2015) conceptualization of forgiveness as involving a decision and work prior to experiencing relief. Previous meta-analytic research (Rasmussen et al, 2019) supports our finding that non-straying partners’ forgiveness facilitated their healing and, in process of time, straying partners’ forgiveness of themselves (Kim et al, 2021). Although some straying partners did not endorse needing to forgive themselves, others reported that this was a significant component of individual and relational healing.…”

Implications of Divine Forgiveness for Conciliatory Behavior: Understanding How Feeling Forgiven by God Influences Apologies Via Self-Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Humility

“…We demonstrated that divine forgiveness is one such factor, which is an underexplored construct that is important to, and experienced by, religious individuals from different faith traditions. Corroborating a growing body of work (e.g., Fincham & May, 2021;Kim et al, 2022), we consistently found that divine forgiveness was associated with (Study 1) and promoted (Study 2) greater self-forgiveness. We extend this literature by showing that divine forgiveness indirectly reduced transgressors' apology behavior through greater self-forgiveness, including both their self-reported apology likelihood and coded apology behavior in an email written to the victim.…”

“…A growing body of work already provides correlational support for this hypothesis (Fincham et al, 2020;Fincham & May, 2021;Kim et al, 2022;Krause, 2017;McConnel & Dixon, 2012, but see Fincham & May, 2019. However, only one set of studies to our knowledge utilized longitudinal and experimental methods to examine the causal effect of divine forgiveness on self-forgiveness.…”

Psychological perspectives on divine forgiveness: seeking divine forgiveness

“…The first involves whether to seek divine forgiveness. Seeking divine forgiveness is important because the perception of such forgiveness is associated with psychological well-being both concurrently (e.g., Fincham and May, 2022a ; Kim et al, 2022 ) and over time ( Long et al, 2020 ). Given the rudimentary nature of research on divine forgiveness (see Fincham, 2022 for a review), it is perhaps not surprising that there are no data on the likelihood of seeking divine forgiveness.…”