Tagged: “Barriers to Forgiveness”
Apart from the idea that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, how can non-believers see the worth in other people?
Aristotle makes a distinction between potentiality and actuality. If it is the case that all people have free will, then even when people behave badly, then they each have the potential to change, to actualize that potential and become better people to others. According to the philosopher Kant, all people are ends in and of themselves and so should be treated as such. The philosopher, Margaret Holmgren, argued for the position that all people, based on Kant’s idea, are worthy of respect. So, there is room in different philosophies for the view that all people have worth.
In your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you state that one purpose of forgiving is being open to reconciling with the other person. I am assuming that you mean a receptivity to reconcile rather than an actual reconciliation as part of forgiving. Is this correct?
Yes, that is correct. As people forgive, they usually are open to reconciliation if and only if the other, who has been deeply hurtful, has changed. So, the receptivity is more of an internal response at first, a waiting to see how the other changes.
The Dark Side of Saying that Self-Forgiveness Has a Dark Side
A recent study by Peetz, Davydenko, and Wohl (2021) concludes that there is a “dark side” to self-forgiveness. They, in fact, use this term three different times in the journal article. The point of this blog is to challenge their view and to show that the statement is an over-reaction to their data.
Here is what they did in the study: They asked people who were entering a grocery store to fill out a self-forgiveness scale specifically regarding over-spending in the past and a scale that assesses beliefs about whether people can change their abilities or not. For the latter variable, the researchers were interested, for example, in whether participants believed they could or could not change their spending habits if they overspent.
Those who believe that people, including themselves, can change unwanted habits are called incrementalists. This issue of incrementalism is important in this research because the authors were hypothesizing that if people think that they cannot change their behavior of over-spending (they are not incrementalists), then they likely will be more cautious in how they spend relative to the incrementalists who might take the cavalier attitude that “I can always change bad behavior.”
So, the expectation in the research was this: Those who over-spent in the past and who now have forgiven themselves, and who think they can change, will have problematic spending on this new shopping venture. This is what the authors called—three times—the “dark side” of self-forgiveness.
So, then, what did they find? In Study 1, with over 100 participants, the statistical results were not significant. The findings approached significance in that those who forgave themselves and who are incrementalists (believing that they can change and so over-spending should not be that big of a deal) tended to spend more, but again it was not statistically significant.
In Study 2, they did a larger study with over 200 participants and found the exact same thing. There was no statistical significance for self-forgivers, who are incrementalists, to over-spend.
Upon their third try, they looked at spending relative to what was the pre-determined budget prior to shopping. Here they did find that those who self-forgave for over-spending in the past and who were incrementalists (thinking they could change and so the over-spending probably is not a big deal) did spend more than those who kept themselves in check because they were not incrementalists (in other words, they did not trust themselves to change spending habits as much as people with the incremental beliefs that they could change).
Yet, here is the bottom-line critique of this work: The authors never assessed: 1) whether or not the participants who spent more than they had planned had way-overdone the spending; 2) whether or not the spending was harmful to their budget or to the family’s budget; and 3) whether or not any true economic injustice was done by the purchase.
The average reported total amount spent by participants in Study 2 was $74.06. For the majority of people, this hardly would destroy the family finances. In other words, was this kind of spending harmful? Self-forgiveness takes place in the context of harm, of unjust treatment, often toward others, and is seen by the self-forgiver as unjust. Was this kind of spending in this study unjust? The authors did not ask the participants if they thought this was the case.
So, in the final analysis, we see that in one of three statistical tries, participants, who formerly have self-forgiven for over-spending and who think they can change their behavior, spend perhaps a little more than those who think they cannot change. How big is this difference and how serious is it for the family? Given the statistical failure in two out of three tries and given the small sum spent on the average ($74.06), it seems to me that calling this a “dark side” of self-forgiveness is not warranted, at least for now. Do you see how there is a “dark side” to exaggerating conclusions about the dark side of forgiveness?
Robert Peetz, J., Davydenko, M., & Wohl, M. J. A. (2021). The cost of self-forgiveness: Incremental theorists spend more money after forgiving the self for past overspending. Personality and Individual Differences, 179, 110902.
What if I think that a person does not deserve to be forgiven? Should I then not go ahead with forgiveness?
There is a difference between your belief that a person does not deserve forgiveness and your willingness to go ahead or not with forgiving. I would say that all people are worthy of being forgiven because all people possess inherent worth. All people are special, unique, and irreplaceable. Yet, forgiveness can take time and so if you are not ready to forgive, this is your choice. I would say that your not going ahead with forgiving has more to do with your own inner world (your willingness to forgive) than it has to do with who this other person is as a person, worthy of forgiveness.
Can a person forgive too soon?
It depends on what you mean by “too soon.” Do you mean that the offended person is still angry and not ready to offer forgiveness, but uses the words, “I forgive you”? If the words are sincere, then this is a kind of promise of more forgiveness to come, such as a change of heart that is more compassionate. If the words, in contrast, are insincere and therefore are meant to deceive the other for some kind of advantage (such as to butter-up the boss), then, yes, the words are being spoken too soon. When deeply hurt by others, most of us need time to work through the process of forgiveness.
