Do Men and Women Experience Forgiveness Differently in Response to Various Types of Infidelity

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental research was to compare males and females in the adult general population of the United States in terms of forgiveness motivations---avoidance, revenge, or benevolence---in response to three different types of hypothetical infidelity---one-night stand, emotional affair, and long-term affair. Forgiveness was measured using the TRIM-18 validated instrument based on a social psychological theory of interpersonal forgiveness. The researcher collected primary data via online survey from a convenience sample size of 192 participants, 101 females and 91 males. Two research questions addressed the main effects (RQ1) and interactive effects (RQ2) of gender and hypothetical infidelity on the three types of forgiveness motivation. The results of the two-way MANOVA analysis revealed statistically significant main effects of gender, F(3, 570) = 6.803, p < 0.001, partial eta2 = 0.035, and hypothetical infidelity, F(6, 1142) = 27.227, p < 0.001, partial eta2 = 0.126 on the variables of avoidance, revenge, and benevolence. Further between-subjects analysis showed gender to have significant main effects on avoidance and benevolence but not on revenge. Hypothetical infidelity had significant main effects on all three dependent variables of avoidance, revenge, and benevolence. There were no statistically significant interactive effects. The groups mean values showed that the females had stronger motivation than the males for avoidance and males had stronger motivation for benevolence across the three types of infidelity. Females had stronger motivation for revenge only under the long-term affair scenario.