Tagged: “Forgiving”
Are You Ready to Become Forgivingly Fit?
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Robert Enright wants you to become “forgivingly fit.” In other words, when you have been treated very unfairly by others, your forgiveness likely will require both time and effort. In our “hurry up” world, there is a tendency to seek the quickest and least painful path. Yet, if you want to forgive deeply, you likely will need more than this. His essay on the Psychology Today website discusses this issue of “forgiving fitness” here: Are You Ready to Become Forgivingly Fit?, November 15, 2025.
Special Issue of a Journal on Forgiveness Education
Dr. Suzanne Freedman
The open-access journal Education Sciences has published 11 articles from a wide range of world contexts, all centered on forgiveness education. The introductory article, written by Dr. Suzanne Freedman, is here: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/12/1628.
An Unprecedented “Big Data” Study in Australia Shows the Association between Forgiveness and Well-Being in Children and Adolescents
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A recent study with 79,670 children and adolescents (aged 7 to 18) in Australia examined whether those who report favorably on forgiveness also have sound psychological health. They concluded their Abstract this way: “These big data findings provide firm evidence that, like adult samples, forgiveness and self-forgiveness are factors in promoting psychological wellbeing, at least among Westernized youth and adolescents.” Of course, because this was not a cause-and-effect study, it is not clear that forgiveness and self-forgiveness promote psychological well-being. It could be the reverse: Those who are feeling well find it easier to forgive. Yet, this study is important because it is the first to use such an impressively large sample to examine forgiveness. The reference to this work is this:
Flaherty, E.M., Strelan, P. & Kohler, M. Forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and child and adolescent mental health: Big data findings from an Australian youth cohort. Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-025-02285-7
Dr. Suzanne Freedman Has a Forgiveness Article Published with the Des Moines Register Newspaper
Dr. Suzanne Freedman
On December 6, 2025, Dr. Suzanne Freedman, a professor at The University of Northern Iowa, had a guest column in the Des Moines Register entitled “What We Get Wrong about Forgiveness and Why It Matters.” In this insightful work, she makes the point that forgiving a person for an injustice does not require an apology. Otherwise, too much power is given to the one who acted unfairly. She further argues that to forgive is not to automatically reconcile, especially if the other remains untrustworthy. Further, to forgive is not only to give up anger because forgiveness, as a moral virtue, challenges the forgiver to see the humanity in the other person. This can take time, and the one who was offended should resist being pressured into a quick and superficial forgiveness. Thank you, Dr. Freedman, for your careful clarification regarding forgiveness for the general public. The article can be accessed here:
Worldwide Requests for Our Research Tools and Forgiveness Curriculum Guides
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Since the beginning of 2025, our International Forgiveness Institute has received requests for our forgiveness research tools and forgiveness curriculum guides from the following 40 countries:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
