Tagged: “family”
Which Protects You Better: Anger or Forgiveness?
On May 14, 2025, an essay was published on the Psychology Today website (Which Protects You Better: Anger or Forgiveness?) contrasting anger as a response to injustice and forgiveness as a very different response. The contrast was discussed because research shows that short-term anger can be beneficial.
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As stated on the website:
“In a recent journal article, Lench et al. (2024) showed in a series of studies that anger ‘has benefits for attaining goals.’ For example, when given very difficult puzzles to solve, it was those who became angry at not progressing who successfully and accurately completed the puzzle. In another example, when presented with video games that had challenges within the game, those who became angry ended with higher scores than those who did not get angry. As a final example, among others in the journal article, those who got angry were more likely to protect their finances when outside sources threatened their money.
What is interesting to note in each of these examples is that the problems were very short-term. Puzzle challenges do not last for years, but instead for minutes or perhaps hours. It is the same with video games, and once the finances are protected in the short run, the challenge and therefore the anger can lessen.”
In contrast, the positive effects of forgiving those who acted unfairly have been well documented in the psychological scientific literature. See, for example, Akhtar and Barlow (2018) and Enright and Fitzgibbons (2024). In response to the title’s question, the essay then makes this statement:
“The question is based on a misunderstanding of the process of forgiveness.”
It is followed up with this answer:
“Over 30 years ago, a process model of forgiveness was introduced into the published literature (Enright & the Human Development Study Group, 1991). One of the first parts of the forgiveness process is to be angry (or sad or frustrated) because this reaction to unjust treatment from others seems to be a natural part of forgiving for many people. In other words, when people forgive, there is time set aside for anger or related emotions as a result of being treated unjustly. Only after people have had the chance to explore their reaction to the injustice do they then move forward with a decision (or not) to forgive, and to offer mercy to those who have not been good to the forgiver.”
The Psychology Today essay ends this way:
“Therefore, in response to the question of which is better, short-term anger or forgiving, the answer is both. They work together, first by acknowledging and feeling the anger, and then deciding to forgive and struggling to offer goodness to the other person.
An important insight about anger and forgiveness is that forgiveness helps mitigate or alleviate short-term anger, preventing it from developing into long-term irritability that can psychologically and physically damage the individual who was treated unjustly.”
References
Akhtar, S. & Barlow, J. (2018). Forgiveness therapy for the promotion of mental well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 19, 107-122.
Enright, R.D. & Fitzgibbons, R. (2024). Forgiveness therapy. APA Books.
Enright, R. D., and the Human Development Study Group. (1991). The moral development of forgiveness. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development, (Vol. 1, pp. 123-152). Erlbaum.
Lench, H. C., Reed, N. T., George, T., Kaiser, K. A., & North, S. G. (2024). Anger has benefits for attaining goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 126, 587–602.
A Forgotten History of Polish People’s Forgiveness After Auschwitz
This is a guest blog post from Edward Reid, who runs the “Polish History” site on Facebook. The essay, copied in full here with Mr. Reid’s permission, shows the forgiving nature of the Polish people after Rudolf Höss brutalized so many in Auschwitz.
Facebook page – April 16, 2025
The essay is as follows:
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In 1947, Rudolf Höss, commandant of German KL Auschwitz in the years 1940-1943, was sentenced to death by the Supreme National Tribunal in Poland. Two weeks later, on 16 April, he was hanged next to the crematorium of the former concentration camp.
Rudolf Höss did not fear death. What he feared was torture, which he believed was inevitable at the hands of his Polish captors. After all, Auschwitz had been located in German-occupied Poland, and it was the Polish people who had suffered so terribly under his command.
What he encountered instead left him stunned.
He was not met with hatred or violence, but with decency and restraint. “I have to confess that I never would have expected to be treated so decently and so kindly in a Polish prison,” he later wrote. That unexpected mercy opened something within him. Several of the Polish guards, themselves former prisoners of Auschwitz, quietly showed him the tattoos burned into their arms. Rather than seek revenge, they treated him with dignity.
It was an act that brought him shame. If those he had helped torment could offer him humanity, then perhaps, he began to wonder, God might offer him mercy as well. Apathy gave way to guilt. Recognition replaced denial. He began to grasp the weight of what he had done.
For the first time, his soul responded to a flicker of love. The ideology he had once followed so blindly had taught him that Poles were inferior, little more than cattle. But now, through their compassion, he saw clearly the humanity of those he had dehumanized. And in that realization, he began to understand the true gravity of his crimes.“In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity,” he wrote. “I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness.”
By all accounts, his repentance appeared genuine. On April 4, 1947, which was Good Friday that year, Höss asked to make a confession. The prison guards struggled to find a priest who spoke fluent German. That is when Höss remembered Father Władysław Lohn, a Jesuit he had once saved from execution. The guards located him in Łagiewniki, Poland, where he was then serving as chaplain at the Shrine of Divine Mercy. Father Lohn heard his confession on the Thursday of Easter week. The next day, he gave him Holy Communion and Viaticum.
Witnesses said that as Höss knelt in his prison cell, he appeared like a small boy.
The man who had once been trained to suppress all weakness now wept openly.
Five days later, on April 16, 1947, as the noose was placed around his neck at Auschwitz, Father Tadeusz Zaremba stood beside him and recited the prayers for the dying.
Whether or not he deserved forgiveness is something each person must decide for themselves. But the crimes committed against the Polish people must never be forgotten.
And neither should the quiet strength of those who, even in the face of unimaginable suffering, chose mercy. This is also why the Polish people, despite their profound heroism and the scale of their suffering were left behind in the telling of history. They did not turn their pain into politics or profit. They did not build monuments to themselves and demand all the world bow to their wounds. They endured in silence behind the Iron Curtain. Many showed mercy when they had every right to hate. And in doing so, they were forgotten by a world that rewards those who shout the loudest, not those who suffer with dignity.
But the truth remains. It was not only the victims who showed humanity – it was the forgotten Polish guards, the priests, the villagers, the mothers, the resistance fighters. They gave the world a quiet, sacred kind of courage.
The kind that history has yet to fully honor…
‘I Forgive You’: After Decades Behind Bars for His Wife’s Murder, Leo Schofield Finds Healing in a Call with the Man Who Confessed
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On April 11, 2025, The News Review (https://www.nrtoday.com/he-served-36-years-for-his-wife-s-murder-and-then-forgave-the-man-who/article_473a7a92-17a1-4b83-95e0-e353e4bcb615.html) in Oregon reported on a man, Leo Schofield, who allegedly killed his wife. He was released from a correctional institution after serving 36 years. He maintained his innocence throughout the imprisonment.
Upon being released to regular society, Mr. Schofield took about one year, and then he had a telephone conversation with the man, Jeremy Scott, who proclaimed on several occasions that he was the one who murdered Mr. Schofield’s wife. It was at that time that Mr. Schofield forgave the other man, reporting that forgiveness is a process of “being freed from the effect” of the hurt he carried inside.
Mr. Schofield seems to have gone through the process of what we call the Work Phase of forgiveness, in which he started to think about Mr. Scott in new ways, not to condone what he did, but to better understand him. As reported in The News Review, Mr. Schofield said this, “‘I developed a certain respect and somewhat of an affinity for the guy,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell him that I genuinely forgive him and, more important, I wanted him to know that there are people that care about him and want to see him do right.’”
Dr. Robert Enright and IFI colleagues featured in recent edition of APA Journal
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Robert Enright was the special issue editor for the first issue of 2025 in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. His colleagues and he published the centerpiece article on what they call the “definitional drift” in how researchers understand the moral construct of forgiveness. There are at least eight different definitions of forgiveness in the published literature, most of which are philosophically incorrect. The central article was followed by commentaries from three philosophers and three psychologists and a final comment by Robert Enright, Jichan Kim, and Jacqueline Song. The centerpiece and final article of the special issue are these:
Song, J., Enright, R.D., & Kim, J. (2025). Definitional drift within the science of forgiveness: The dangers of avoiding philosophical analyses. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 45(1), 3-24. Note: This is the centerpiece article for a special issue on the definition of forgiveness within psychology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000278
Enright, R.D., Kim, J., & Song, J. (2025). Our hope that definitional drift in forgiveness will cease from drifting: Our comments on the six commentaries. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 45(1), 65-71. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000306
Dr. Enright Gives Keynote Address at Restorative Justice Conference
Dr. Robert Enright
Dr. Robert Enright gave the keynote address at the national restorative justice conference, Embracing the Circle Conference, at Stranmillis University College, Belfast, Northern Ireland, on February 5, 2025. The address was entitled Developing teachers and students as transmitters of forgiveness. One of his main points is that restorative justice primarily is centered on dialogue. Yet, if students or adults are dialoguing with resentment in the heart, then the conversation likely will be less effective than when people have forgiving and, therefore, compassionate hearts. In other words, people can be civil when they are face-to-face at a peace table, but if there is deep anger in the heart, this can fester once those who are dialoguing leave the table. He encouraged those who emphasize restorative justice to consider changing hearts prior to meeting for dialogue. That conversation might bear more fruit between and among people.
