The process of forgiveness transforms a person’s responses to the transgressor, transgression,

and the negative consequences (i.e., the sequelae) of the transgression. Responses are a
person’s transgression- and transgressor-related thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The
concept of responses has two components, valence and strength. Valence refers to whether
the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are negative, neutral, or positive. Strength refers to the
intensity and intrusiveness of the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, and it can vary as a result
of factors such as the perceived harm caused by the transgression.
A person who forgives may transform his or her negative responses by
 changing the valence from negative to either neutral or positive, or
 changing both the valence and strength of the responses.
In order to forgive, the valence of a person’s responses must change, at least to neutral. Some
argue that in order to forgive, a person must develop compassion and empathy for the
transgressor. In the model of forgiveness upon which the HFS is based, it is not necessary to
develop positive responses such as compassion and empathy. Neutral responses are
considered sufficient for forgiveness.
It is not necessary for a person to change the strength of his or her responses in order to
forgive. Nonetheless, weakening one’s responses may foster forgiveness because it decreases
the intrusiveness or intensity of negative transgression-related thoughts or feelings. Thus,
weakening of responses may be involved when people report that “time” has helped them to
forgive.
The inclusion of “situations” as a potential source of transgressions (and target of
forgiveness) appears to be unique to this conceptualization of forgiveness, and to the
Heartland Forgiveness Scale. Situations that violate people’s positive assumptions and lead
to negative responses to those situations are responded to as transgressions. For example, a
catastrophic illness might violate a person’s assumptions of invulnerability or meaningfulness
(e.g., “I’m healthy” and “bad things don’t happen to good people for no reason”), and lead to
negative thoughts, feelings, or behaviors about the illness and related sequelae (e.g., feelings
of anger or sadness and the thoughts “this has ruined my life; I don’t deserve this”).1

Dimensions Of Forgiveness:

1
https://www.heartlandforgiveness.com/model-and-definition-of-forgiveness
There are three major dimensions assessing.
(A) forgiveness of self [Self—items refer to negative emotions toward oneself (e.g., shame,
guilt)],
(B) others [Other—items refer to negative attitudes toward a transgressor (e.g.,
revenge)], and
(C) situations [Situation—items refer to facing up to uncontrollable events (e.g., natural
disaster, cancer)]. 

5 Steps towards Forgiveness:

Licensed clinical psychologist Everett L. Worthington Jr., who has dedicated his career to
forgiveness research, shares his REACH Forgiveness techniques for forgiving others in five
steps — steps he used to forgive his mother’s murderer.
R = Recall the hurt. Make up your mind not to be nasty and hurtful in return, not to hold a
grudge, not to treat yourself like a victim and not to treat your partner as a jerk. Decide to
forgive — not pursuing payback but instead treating the person as a valuable person.
E = Empathize with your partner. Pretend the other person is in an empty chair across from
you. Pour your heart out. When you’ve had your say, sit in the chair and talk back to the
imaginary you as the other person might. This builds empathy. Even if you can’t empathize,
you might feel more sympathy, compassion or love, which may help you heal from hurt. 
A = Altruistic gift. Give forgiveness as an unselfish, altruistic gift — one that the offender
does not deserve. We all can remember when we wronged someone — maybe a parent,
teacher or friend — and the person forgave us. We felt light and free. We didn’t want to
disappoint that person by being hurtful again. By forgiving unselfishly, you can give that
same gift to the one who hurt you.
C = Commit. After you’ve forgiven, write a note to yourself — something as simple as
“Today I forgave [person’s name] for hurting me.” That will help your forgiveness last.
H = Hold on to forgiveness. We write such notes because we will almost surely be tempted
to doubt that we really forgave. When we doubt our forgiveness, we can reread our note. We
did forgive.
https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2021/ways-to-forgive.html

 What the Research Says About Mindfulness and Forgiveness

Scientists at Radboud University in the Netherlands conducted several studies to see if
mindfulness or paying attention on purpose with an open and accepting attitude, is related to
our ability to forgive.
In the first study, 160 men and women, 72 of whom reported having a regular meditation
practice, completed an online survey about their meditation practice, mindfulness, and their
tendency to forgive. Some of the participants were new to mindfulness (36.1% of respondents
had 1 to 5 years of meditation experience), while others had been practicing for years (12.5%
had between 6 and 10 years of practice, and the other 18.1% had been meditating for over 10
years).
As anticipated, people who meditated reported being more mindful, but meditators (no longer
how long they had been practicing) were not necessarily more forgiving than non-meditators.
It was a person’s “mindful disposition,” or tendency to be inherently mindful, that was most
strongly linked to a forgiving attitude.
To understand these results, the same researchers dug deeper into the links between
meditation, mindfulness, and forgiveness. They asked a different group of 87 college-aged
students to answer questions about perspective taking and rumination in addition to those
about mindfulness and forgiveness.
Students with higher mindfulness scores were more willing to take another person’s
perspective, which was associated with a greater likelihood to forgive
Here they found that students with higher mindfulness scores were more willing to take
another person’s perspective, which was associated with a greater likelihood to forgive.
Rumination did not play a factor.
Would these results hold in a real-life experience? To answer this question  a new group of
124 university students were asked to recall a time when they’d been offended and write
down their experience. They then rated how close they were to the person who harmed them,
and how hurt they felt, and filled out questionnaires about perspective taking, rumination and
mindfulness.
Like the first 2 studies, mindfulness was linked to forgiveness, this time of an actual past
offense. Much of this effect could be explained by the respondent’s ability to take another’s
perspective, and rumination didn’t play a role. What’s more, this tendency to forgive was
stronger with closer others, but less likely if the harm was felt to be severe2.

 Gender difference in relationship between forgiveness and empathy

It is likely that an ability to understand others, to relate to others, and to treat others as one
would like to be treated would enable a person to forgive others. The empathic person tends
to focus on others’ experiences in a fairly objective or unselfish manner rather than focusing
on one’s own experiences in a selfish manner. As we mentioned above, Enright et al.
(1998) discussed empathy as a factor in the work phase of the process of forgiveness,
and McCullough (2000) and Worthington (1998) have discussed empathy as a determinant of
2
https://www.mindful.org/mindful-people-may-be-more-willing-to-forgive/
the ability to forgive. Other researchers have confirmed this relationship. Zechmeister and
Romero (2002) found a link between forgiveness and both situational and dispositional
empathy. Fincham et al. (2002) showed a link between forgiveness and emotional empathy in
a hypothetical marital offense. Konstam, Chernoff, and Deveney (2001) showed relationships
between forgiveness and both cognitive and emotional empathy. Macaskill, Maltby, and Day
(2002) reported a relationship between empathy and forgiveness of others but not
oneself. Farrow et al. (2001) even showed common neurophysiological correlates of empathy
and forgiveness. In sum, multiple forms of evidence point to a link between empathy and
forgiveness. Based on this evidence, the present study’s first hypothesis follows:
Hypothesis 1: Dispositional, emotional empathy will be positively associated with
forgiveness.
Empathy is a variable that is important in promoting forgiveness. As indicated above,
theoretical and empirical works support this notion. However, two important research
questions remain unanswered regarding gender, empathy, and forgiveness. First, do gender
differences in empathy generalize to similar constructs such as forgiveness? Second, does
gender moderate the relationship between empathy and forgiveness, and, as such, is empathy
a more important predictor of forgiveness for women or men?
Commonly held stereotypes and popular culture suggest that women have a greater capacity
for understanding others’ thoughts and feelings than do men (Klein & Hodges, 2001). Also,
empirical researchers have found that gender differences in empathy commonly indicate that
women have higher levels than do men (Batson et al., 1996; Gault & Sabini, 2000; Lennon &
Eisenberg, 1987; Macaskill et al., 2002; Schieman & Van Gundy, 2000). Further, research
indicates the possibility that these differences may be the result of motivation rather than
ability (Klein & Hodges). Regardless of the cause, women appear to be more empathic than
men. Consistent with these findings, our second hypothesis is the following:
Hypothesis 2: Women will show higher levels of empathy than will men.
Gender differences, which exist for empathy, do not similarly exist for forgiveness. There
appear to be no straightforward gender differences in levels of forgiveness. In reviewing the
literature on forgiveness in group interventions, Worthington, Sandage, and Berry
(2000) estimated a gender effect by correlating effect size and percentage of males by using a
regression analysis and showed that women are no more likely to forgive than men. Yet
Worthington et al. stated that fewer men than women participate in group interventions
involving forgiveness and that there may be some reason to suspect that men are more prone
to unforgiveness than women. However, empirical studies provide no support for that
assertion. Berry, Worthington, Parrott, O’Connor, and Wade (2001) documented no
significant gender differences in dispositional forgiveness. Macaskill et al. (2002) also did not
find any significant gender differences in the participant’s forgiveness of oneself or others.
Even when gender differences in forgiveness have emerged in the literature, they have been
contextualized by other variables. For instance, Kalbfleisch (1997) found no gender
difference in overall forgiveness in a study of conflict resolution between mentors and
protégés. However, when examining forgiveness in a particularly emotional context (when
protégés cried), Kalbfleisch found that higher levels of forgiveness were present in female
mentors than in male mentors. For another example, Kadiangandu, Mullet, and Vinsonneau
(2001) showed that while gender differences appeared in a French sample, such differences
did not occur in a Congolese sample. Because of the findings in the current literature, our
third hypothesis is the following:
Hypothesis 3: There will be no gender differences in forgiveness.
Extant literature indicates gender differences in levels of empathy but not in levels of
forgiveness. However, beyond the question of whether gender differences exist in levels of
these variables is another important research question: whether gender acts as a moderator of
the relationship between empathy and forgiveness. In other words, it may be the case that the
relationship between empathy and forgiveness is qualitatively or quantitatively different for
women than it is for men.
There are currently two studies in the literature that evaluate gender differences in the
relationship between empathy and forgiveness. In one study, Macaskill et al.
(2002) examined empathy and forgiveness of oneself and others in 324 British
undergraduates. In that study, Macaskill et al. showed that women were higher than men in
levels of empathy but not in either type of forgiveness. Empathy was positively associated
with forgiveness of others but not with forgiveness of oneself for both men and women. It
appeared that this association was smaller for men than for women; however, Macaskill et al.
reported no statistical test for the difference between these correlations. In the other study, as
part of a larger model’s studies, Fincham et al. (2002) examined empathy and forgiveness in
the context of marriage with 171 Italian husbands and wives. In that study, Fincham et al. did
not examine simple gender differences in empathy or forgiveness but did examine the
relationship separately in husbands and in wives. The results indicated a difference in the
relationship between empathy and forgiveness across gender. The relationship between
emotional empathy and forgiveness of a hypothetical offense was positive for both men and
women but stronger for men. However, again there was no formal statistical test to evaluate
whether the difference between these correlations was statistically significant. Researchers
can conclude two things from these studies. First, there appear to be gender differences in the
relationship between empathy and forgiveness. Second, the nature and magnitude of these
differences are not clear. In fact, the results from the two studies reviewed above are
contradictory. In both studies, the association between empathy and forgiveness is positive,
but in one study the relationship is stronger for men, and in the other study the pattern is
reversed. In neither study is it clear that the magnitude of the difference is sufficient to be
considered statistically significant.
Based on these findings, our goal was to examine the relationship between empathy and
forgiveness separately in men and in women and to evaluate whether any differences in the
two relationships are statistically significant. Our fourth hypothesis is the following:
Hypothesis 4: There will be a difference between men and women in the size of the
relationship between emotional empathy and forgiveness; however, the direction of this
difference cannot be predicted. That is, on the basis of the current literature, researchers
cannot predict whether men or women will show a stronger relationship between empathy
and forgiveness.
RESULTS:
Participants were 127 community residents who completed self-report measures of empathy
and forgiveness. The present results showed that women were more empathic than men, but
no gender difference for forgiveness was apparent. However, the association between
empathy and forgiveness did differ by gender. Empathy was associated with forgiveness in
men—but not in women.3

3
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1963313/?
_escaped_fragment_=po=16.3793

A Look at the Theory and Research

Although forgiveness has been an important concept in many religious and spiritual practices
for millennia, it is new as an object of psychological research. Nevertheless, there are already
several different models of forgiveness.
Baumeister, Exline, and Sommer were the first to differentiate between intra- and
interpersonal forgiveness models and proposed the process of forgiveness on a continuum of
silent and hallow forgiveness on one side versus full forgiveness at the other end of the
spectrum (1998).
The interpersonal models usually do not cover the experience of forgiveness as something
that occurs within the person and can be termed better as interactions surrounding the
transgression.
Sapolsky (Sapolsky, & Share, 2004) and de Waal (de Waal, & Pokorny, 2005), for example,
created a reconciliation-based model where the focus was on reconciliation rituals.
They argued that these rituals are based on the evolutionary theory and have been effectively
used to foster repair in relationships. Sapolsky and others showed that many of the
reconciliation rituals throughout history were designed to lower arousal and suggested that
this could lead to forgiveness.
McCullough (2001) extended the reconciliation-based model to include the intrapersonal
realm and conceptualized forgiveness as an attachment-empathy system competing with
ruminating justice-revenge system, but still for the purpose of governing the social process.
Hargrave and Sells’ interpersonal theory saw forgiveness as driven by exoneration and
entitlement and divided it into stages, although not necessarily sequential (1997).
Insight and understanding stages were about recognition of dynamics and identifying the
reasons for transgression. When occurring together, they were considered as an exoneration
of the individual because in the context of family, for example, the system was responsible
for the problem and no one was guilty.
The third and fourth stage, more explicitly interpersonal, were a form of allowing for
compensation. Here the responses of the offender would be considered, and explicit forgiving
would take place including expression of forgiveness from victim to the offender as well as
the offender’s response to that forgiveness.
Rusbult’s interdependence theory model conceptualized forgiveness, particularly in a
relationship, as a gut response to transgression characterized by angry emotions and
vengeance motive (2005). While most people restrain the gut feeling, subsequent cognitions,
emotions, and motivations move them toward pro- or anti-relationship behavior.
These behaviors were categorized into passive positive loyalty or passive negative neglect on
one side and then active positive voice and active negative exit on the other.

Intrapersonal forgiveness models are exemplified by Worthington’s stress-coping model of

forgiveness. His early model was based on the classical conditioning model, where his
explanation of forgiveness was simply about how transgression causes emotional pain.
Here, forgiveness was defined as triggering of an emotional response where extinction of
such response would be forgiving until it was triggered again.
The model originally did not acknowledge the cognitive complexity, exercise of willpower or
the nuances of the situation. It had eventually evolved into a comprehensive REACH model
discussed below as an example of the process of forgiveness that employs multiple methods
to encourage forgiveness.

https://positivepsychology.com/forgiveness-benefits/#theory