The Relationship Between Forgiveness, Bullying, and Cyberbullying in Adolescence: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The study of bullying in adolescence has received increased attention over the past several decades. A growing body of research highlights the role of forgiveness and its association with aggression. In this article, we systematically review published studies on the association among online and traditional bullying and forgiveness in adolescents. Systematic searches were conducted in PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PsycArticles, and Scopus databases. From a total of 1,093 studies, 637 were nonduplicated studies and 18 were eventually included. Together, these studies provided evidence that forgiveness and bullying behaviors are negatively related: Adolescents with higher forgiveness levels bully less. Similarly, forgiveness is negatively related to victimization: Adolescents with higher forgiveness show less victimization. Unforgiveness was positively related to traditional and online bullying. This relationship appears to be consistent beyond types of bullying, certain background characteristics, and forgiveness measures. These findings are discussed, and clinical implications and guidelines for future research are presented.

Traditional Bullying, Cyberbullying and Mental Health in Early Adolescents: Forgiveness as a Protective Factor of Peer Victimisation

“…This understanding of forgiveness would serve to protect victims of aggression from further unhealthy relationships, even when aggressions continues in schools, boosting courage to report the bullying aggressions. Finally, interventions may benefit from parental and teacher components to broaden the scope of the intervention, such as actively involving parents and teachers to improve forgiveness in adolescents instead of calling for revenge or avoidance [ 32 , 57 ].…”

“…One individual approach to dealing with negative emotions after interpersonal transgressions that has been found to have related to less emotional hurt in response to past different instances of aggression is forgiveness [ 29 , 30 ]. Although there is a growing body of research focusing on forgiveness and bullying, the majority of studies have been conducted in the context of adulthood [ 31 , 32 ]. Consequently, this study focuses on forgiveness as one potentially important individual protective factor to effectively contribute to the scarce existing literature.…”

“…During the last decade, there has been a growing interest in the association between forgiveness and bullying [ 30 , 34 ]. According to a recent systematic review by Quintana-Orts, Rey, and Worthington [ 32 ], forgiveness was negatively related with bullying victimisation and predicted better psychological adjustment, even after accounting for bullying behaviour, victimisation experiences, and general coping strategies (e.g., conflict resolution, advice, and seeking support). Furthermore, forgiveness was also found to be a moderator, showing that it might reduce the impact of the negative consequences of being bullied.…”

“…From the stress-and-coping framework, forgiveness is argued to be an effective emotion-focused coping strategy [ 36 ] at reducing the sense of threat appraisal and the level of negative emotions and motivations related to bullying victimisation [ 26 , 30 ]. In this sense, forgiveness might be an emotion-focused coping strategy that would allow adolescents to overcome resultant emotional hurt, decreasing health and psychological problems linked to be bullied and increasing psychological adjustment and wellbeing [ 32 , 37 ].…”

Cyberbullying in the University Setting. Relationship With Emotional Problems and Adaptation to the University

“…Many studies have analyzed the phenomenon in adolescence (DeSmet et al, 2015;Ho et al, 2017;Extremera et al, 2018;Quintana et al, 2019), however, lately, high prevalence rates have also been found in the university environment. So, researchers have suggested that prevalence rates of students who are victimized by electronic means during the higher education period may range from 5 to 40% (Finn, 2004;Lindsay and Krysik, 2012;Faucher et al, 2014;Zalaquett and Chatters, 2014).…”