Tagged: “Why Forgive?”
The Psychology of Interpersonal Forgiveness
By Suzanne Freedman, Ph.D.
Professor, University of Northern Iowa
I loved seeing the article on forgiveness in last month’s newsletter. I have discovered in my 30 years of studying forgiveness from a psychological perspective, that there are many misconceptions associated with what it means to forgive and contexts associated with forgiveness.
A common comment I hear from students in my university course on interpersonal forgiveness is that forgiveness is more complicated than people realize. It may not be the same notion of forgiveness preached by one’s parents or a religious leader. It goes beyond just saying the words, “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you.” Although we often ask for forgiveness for minor injuries, forgiveness occurs in the context of deep, personal and unfair hurt (Smedes, 1996, The Art of Forgiving).
Specifically, forgiveness involves a willingness to abandon one’s right to resentment, negative judgment, and negative behavior toward an offender, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, empathy, and goodwill toward one’s offender (Enright, 2001, Forgiveness is a Choice). Notice that in this definition, one has a right to resentment and that the offender does not deserve one’s compassion and goodwill.
Although frequently confused with forgetting, acceptance, condoning, excusing, pardon, and denial of anger, forgiveness is none of these. When we forgive, we decrease our negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward the offender and over time, increase our positive thoughts, feelings, and sometimes behaviors toward the offender. We can also only forgive for the way that we were personally impacted by an offense.
Another common misconception about forgiveness is that you cannot forgive unless you receive an apology from the offender. This may be true for reconciliation but not forgiveness. Forgiveness is something people can do all on their own, for their own well-being, without any response from the offender. Forgiveness can sometimes lead to reconciliation between the injured party and the offender, but it does not have to.
I began my career by educating adult incest survivors about forgiveness, and have recently turned my attention to children and adolescents. By teaching students about the psychological process of forgiveness, we are helping them develop healthy ways to express feelings, understand the perspective of others, and practice empathy and kindness.
As summarized by a 5th grader who was part of a forgiveness education program that I taught:
“I’ve learned that anger is a natural feeling. It takes time to forgive. You don’t have to forgive right away. They don’t always apologize. Forgiveness is one step closer to healing. You don’t have to be friends with the offender after. Apologies make forgiving easier. Forgiveness is made by the person who was hurt. If you want revenge, then you haven’t forgiven in your heart.”
I am often asked “Why forgive?” and my response is always the same: “What’s the alternative?” Although forgiveness cannot undo the injury, or damage caused by the injury, it allows us to move forward in our lives free from the negative effects of all-consuming anger, hatred, and resentment. It offers us a way to heal while still acknowledging that what happened to us was wrong, unfair, and extremely hurtful.
This article originally appeared in the June 2021 issue of SEL in Action, “a newsletter written for educators, by educators to share real world stories, questions, ideas and opinions about how to address the social and emotional needs of students and the adults who teach them.” Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success.
Dr. Suzanne Freedman
Dr. Suzanne Freedman is the author of The Courage to Forgive: Educating Elementary School Children About Forgiveness, a curriculum guide for 4th and 5th grade students she co-authored with Dr. Robert Enright.
Dr. Freedman was recognized with a Veridian Community Engagement Fellowship (Fall 2020) for “meeting a community need through teaching and/or scholarship.” That same year she was also awarded a Kern Family Foundation Grant for a project that “examined ways that moral virtues, such as empathy, can be infused into a course on child and adolescent development.“
Learn more about Dr. Freedman and her work at the University of Northern Iowa.
What if I think that forgiveness is not the solution? Then what?
Forgiveness is not necessarily a solution to injustice because to right that wrong you need the moral virtue of justice. Forgiveness is a response to injustice in that you are now confronting the effects of the injustice (anger, possibly a strained relationship, disharmony in the family or organization) and so it is important to address those negative effects, if you choose to forgive. So, if you are thinking about forgiveness as solving the problem of injustice, I think you are asking the wrong question about forgiveness. Instead of “How will forgiveness solve this problem?” I would urge you to ask a different question: “How can forgiveness help me (and us) overcome the negative effects of the injustice?”
You say that suffering makes us stronger. I say, when it comes to children, that what they need is to be safe from abuse, not to become stronger. What do you think?
I do not imply that we should seek suffering for the purpose of becoming stronger. Instead, my point is this: When we are treated unjustly and as we suffer, we often mature as persons. For example, we become more sensitive to the suffering in others. Now here is the important distinction between what I just said and what I think you are saying: Even adults, when they are abused and suffer, need to find a place of safety. To become strong does not negate the necessity of doing all one can to be safe. So, both adults and children need to be kept safe as they suffer. Both, also, may grow stronger as they suffer. To be safe and to grow stronger can occur together.
I heard that you recently published a study with your colleagues in which you helped men in prison learn to forgive. What did you find and why did you focus on prisoners who, it seems to me, need to ask us for forgiveness because of what they did?
Rehabilitation in correctional institutions tends to focus on changing the behavior which led to the sentencing in the first place. Yet, our research found that about 90% of 103 men whom we surveyed had considerable injustices against them when they were children or adolescents. One gentleman was thrown out of his home by his mother when he was 10 years old. He slept under cars at night as his bed. So often, this kind of cruelty against children can lead to a welling up of hatred and this can lead to crime, arrest, and imprisonment. Forgiveness Therapy allowed the men to forgive those who abused them which led to a statistically significant decrease in clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression to normal or near normal levels. They also developed more empathy toward people in general. Those in the control group, without Forgiveness Therapy, did not show this kind of improvement in their mental health, but when they then were given Forgiveness Therapy, they, too, showed similar improvement compared with the original experimental group. Here is the reference to that research:
Yu, L., Gambaro, M., Song, J., Teslik, M., Song, M., Komoski, M.C., Wollner, B., & Enright, R.D. (2021). Forgiveness therapy in a maximum-security correctional institution: A randomized clinical trial. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.
Can’t I forgive simply because it is good in and of itself? Do I really need some kind of external reason, such as helping my family or assisting the one who was unfair? The more abstract reason, that goes well beyond physical consequences, seems to me to be an important reason for forgiving.
Yes, I agree with you. We do not have to have, as you say, the motivation of forgiving to be the bringing about of a physical consequence such as improved family relationships or the rehabilitation of another’s behavior. Forgiveness as a moral virtue is good in and of itself and your engaging in this moral virtue as its own end is good. We need to keep in mind that forgiving unconditionally, for its own sake, can and often does lead to positive physical consequences (feeling better and/or a restored relationship). As you correctly point out, one does not have to have some kind of guarantee that such physical consequences will occur before we forgive.
