Tagged: “Children”

Can witnesses to abuse forgive the abuser even though the witnesses were not the ones harmed? For example, suppose one child is scapegoated in the family. Could a sibling, now an adult, who did not experience the parental wrath forgive the parents?

Yes, the adult child who was not abused can feel free to forgive the parent for abusing the adult child’s sibling. Trudy Govier, a philosopher in Canada, refers to this as secondary forgiveness. The abused child, who wishes to forgive, would be engaging in primary forgiveness.

Coveted Forgiveness Research Tools Now Available at No Cost

The man Time magazine has called “the forgiveness trailblazer” is blazing forward in a new direction by offering to social science and moral development researchers around the world the accumulation of forgiveness research tools he has developed over the past 35 years. And he is giving them away at no cost and with no strings attached. 

Dr. Robert Enright, co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI), announced today that he is now providing his highly regarded scientific research tools absolutely free to any forgiveness researcher who requests them.

“This initiative is designed to help expand and broaden the growing collection of crucial forgiveness knowledge,” Dr. Enright says. “This area of moral development has already had significant impacts in the realms of education, medical treatment, and emotional therapy, so why not try to expand on that?”

Often introduced as                   “Dr. Forgiveness” because of his 35-year academic commitment to researching and implementing forgiveness programs, Dr. Enright is acknowledged as the unquestioned pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness. The research tools he and his associates have developed have become highly coveted tools because of his meticulous validation of the scientific procedures he employs.

All of Dr. Enright’s research is done in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he is a Professor of Educational Psychology. You can access his peer-reviewed empirical studies, research abstracts, and published studies at Forgiveness Research. 

In addition to sharing his research results, Dr. Enright is now making available his user-validated forgiveness research tools at no cost. Those tools include:

• The Enright Forgiveness Inventory-30 (EFI-30) – This tool is a shorter version of the Enright Forgiveness Inventory for Adults that has become the interpersonal forgiveness measure of choice for research professionals in the U.S. and abroad since its development in 1995. The EFI-30 reduces the number of items from 60 to 30 for the purpose of a more practical assessment of this construct. Data from the United States were used in the creation of the new measure and applied to seven nations: Austria, Brazil, Israel, Korea, Norway, Pakistan, and Taiwan to develop its psychometric validation.
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• The Enright Self-Forgiveness Inventory (ESFI) – This measure is based on the conceptualization of forgiveness as a moral virtue. The ESFI is a 30-item scale featuring six subscales with five items each. Five additional items at the end of the scale allow for measurement of pseudo self-forgiveness (PSF). Although several competing self-forgiveness measures exist, Dr. Enright’s is the only one that captures the idea that self-forgiveness is a moral virtue that includes behavior toward the self.
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• The Enright Group Forgiveness Inventory (EGFI) – Newly validated and published earlier this year, the EGFI has 56 items across seven subscales with each subscale having eight items. Those subscales measure a group’s motivation and values regarding forgiveness, peace, and friendliness toward the other group. Like the ESFI, it also has a PSF component and has dramatic implications for its ability to enhance peace efforts in the world.
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  To develop and validate the EGFI, Dr. Enright worked with a team of 16 international researchers who collected data from 595 study participants in three different geographic and cultural settings of the world—China and Taiwan, Slovenia, and the US. The study team’s findings documented that this new measure has strong internal consistency as well as convergent and discriminant validity.
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• The Enright Forgiveness Inventory for Children (EFI-C) – The EFI-C is an objective measure of the degree to which a child forgives another who has hurt him or her deeply and unfairly. It is a 30-item scale similar to the 60-item adult version and is presented orally to very young children and in writing to those who can read well. Thanks to a researcher in Pakistan, the EFI-C is now available in the Urdu language—the native language of an estimated 230 million people, primarily in South Asia.

Dr. Enright is the author or editor of seven books. 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 scientific studies of forgiveness therapy and developed an early intervention to promote forgiveness–the 20-step Process Model of Forgiving.

By publicly sharing all his research studies and results in more than 100 publications over the years, Dr. Enright has earned recognition as being in the forefront of the science of forgiveness. The Los Angeles Times described Dr. Enright as “the guru of what many are calling a new science of forgiveness.” The Christian Science Monitor called him “the father of forgiveness research.”

Learn more about Dr. Enright’s free tools on the Forgiveness Research Tools page.

Because my family is in “very close quarters” lately because of the pandemic, I find that I can get more irritable than usual. Does this mean that I am a bad person and do I have to forgive myself for this?

If you have been truly unjust, then yes, you could ask others to forgive you and also forgive yourself. Yet, you may be falling for a false issue here which is being too harsh on yourself. A social worker once told me that those who care for others can develop the false sense that they never have done quite enough. So, as tensions emerge in your home, please be careful not to excessively blame yourself (“If only I had done more.”). We are all imperfect and so we have to be gentle with ourselves and others. Cut yourself some slack now, knowing that you are trying and accept your imperfections of fatigue anxiety at this time. I recommend that you refrain from forgiving yourself if you simply and truly are doing your best, yet the family is not interacting perfectly.

May I follow-up on my question about forgiving one’s mother if she is deceased? You mention that part of forgiving is to try, within reason, to give a gift to the one who acted unfairly. How can one give a gift to a deceased person?

You can give an indirect gift to one who is deceased. For example, you can donate to a charity in the person’s name. You can share a kind word about the person to other family members, knowing that the deceased person was more than the injustices against you. If you are a person of faith, you can say a prayer for the person. So, it is possible to practice giving a gift even to those who no longer are with us.

How can I bring forgiveness resources to schools?

We have developed Forgiveness Education Curriculum Guides for teachers and parents. These guides run from pre-kindergarten (age 4) through the end of high school (age 18). All of these guides are described here on our International Forgiveness Institute website, in the Store section. You can read some of our scientifically-tested school programs here as well by going to the Forgiveness Education section. At the dropdown menu, select Research. That will bring you to a page with some of our Forgiveness Therapy research (presented first) and our Forgiveness Education research. I am here to help if you want to approach schools on this vital issue of forgiveness education.