You guys seem to have a lot of knowledge about forgiveness. I am curious. How many hours a day do you spend on forgiveness and what do you read to attain this knowledge?
Yes, we spend about 12 hours a day thinking about the topic of forgiveness. We read classic works, such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Plato’s Republic. Currently we are reading the following book chapter and journal article to challenge us:
Murphy, G. (2005). Forgiveness, self-respect, and the value of resentment. In E.L. Worthington (Ed.), Handbook of Forgiveness. New York: Routledge (pp. 33-40).
McNulty, J.K. (2011). The dark side of forgiveness: The tendency to forgive predicts continued psychological and physical aggression in marriage. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 770-783.
We are also thinking about community-based forgiveness programs and we find this article helpful: Gibson, J. L. (2006). The contributions of truth to reconciliation. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, 409-432.
Our reading list is ever changing and expanding.
Added Note from the IFI Director: Dr. Forgiveness (aka Dr. Robert Enright) is the unquestioned pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness. He has been called “the forgiveness trailblazer” by Time magazine and is often introduced as “the father of forgiveness research” because of his 25-year academic commitment to researching and implementing forgiveness programs.
Dr. Enright is the author or editor of five books, and over 100 publications centered on social development and the psychology of forgiveness. He published the first social scientific journal article on person-to-person forgiveness and the first cross-cultural studies of interpersonal forgiveness. He also pioneered forgiveness therapy and developed an early intervention to promote forgiveness–the 20-step “Process Model of Forgiving.” The Enright Forgiveness Inventory, now used by researchers around the world, is an objective measure of the degree to which one person forgives another who has hurt him or her deeply and unfairly.
