Conceptualizing forgiveness within the context of a reversal theory framework: The role of personality, motivation, and emotion

The purpose of this study was to examine the construct of forgiveness within the context of a reversal theory framework. A sample of 262 undergraduate students, ranging in age from 18 to 25 years and including 122 males and 140 females, completed the Motivational Style Profile (MSP), the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI), the Willingness to Forgive Scale (WFS), and a Time-Factor Questionnaire (TFQ) that was designed for this study. The forgiveness ratings of the participants who achieved high-dominance in arousal-avoidance were compared to those of the participants who achieved high-dominance in arousal-seeking. Similarly, the forgiveness ratings of the participants who achieved high-dominance in autic sympathy were compared to those of the participants who achieved high-dominance in autic mastery. Despite differential expectations, there were no significant differences between these groups on the measures of forgiveness. Numerous conceptual and methodological factors that might account for the findings were identified. With respect to the methodological issues pertaining to the MSP, the high inter-correlations between the MSP subscales rendered it difficult to identify distinct factors. There were also methodological concerns related to the measures that were used to assess forgiveness. For example, the number of times participants selected forgiveness solutions as problem-solving strategies on each of the WFS subscales was too low to be useful. The one robust finding in this study came from the addition of the TFQ, which added the dimension of time to the WFS scenarios. The participants consistently indicated that they would be increasingly likely to forgive with the passage of time.