| The purpose of this study was to investigate forgiveness between male and female 9th and 12th grade students and its relationship to coping strategies and attributional styles. A sample of 485 9th and 12th grade students from a Midwestern, middle and upper middle class suburban high school was used in this study. General coping strategies, religiosity, negative (pessimistic) and positive (optimistic) explanatory styles, personal and family characteristics, the effect of time, the degree of hurt, and if the offender apologized were examined to determine their influence on adolescent's use of forgiveness to cope with conflict in their friendships.Female students' mean scores for total forgiveness, as well as affective and behavioral measures on the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI) were significantly higher than male student's scores. No differences were found between 9 th and 12th grade students or for the interaction between grade and gender.Gender was a statistically significant positive predictor of active, emotion-focused, acceptance, and turning to religion, with females more likely to use these 246 coping strategies than males. Explanatory styles, especially for negative events, may influence coping. Participants had more global then specific attributions for positive and negative events which were found to be predictors for active coping, emotion-focused coping, acceptance coping, religion, and avoidant coping. Grade was a significant predictor of emotion-focused coping and turning to religion.Forgiveness could be predicted from how deeply hurt participants were when the friendship conflict occurred, with adolescents who were more deeply hurt by the conflict likely to have higher levels of forgiveness. Possible reasons for students forgiving their friend may be to maintain their friendship, to make themselves feel better, to make their friend feel better, or because it was the moral thing to do. Forgiveness and total cognition could be predicted from receiving an apology from the offending friend. Participants who received an apology were more likely to forgive the offender and may have ceased having condemning thoughts about them. Additional research is needed before establishing treatment interventions for this group. |
