A Developmental Study On Forgiveness In The Context Of Hurt In Adolescence

Forgiveness has recently been one of important topics in moral psychology research. The study was based on summarizing contents including philosophical origin, developmental stage, process model, factors of influencing forgiveness and the model of interpersonal forgiveness. The study explored the development of forgiveness, which was integrated with factors of incidents contexts, companion relationship, age and sex in adolescence. The results showed:(1) Contexts had significant effect on the degree of emotional response, perceived hurt and forgiveness. In the context of hurt reputation and hurt privacy, the degree of anger and perceived hurt were highest and the degree of forgiveness is lowest.(2) The companion relationships had significant effect on the degree of emotional response and forgiveness. Adolescents had different moral responses to good friends and general schoolmates. The degree of anger for good friends was lower than that for general schoolmates, and the degree of forgiveness for good friends was higher than that for general schoolmates.(3) Gender had no significant effect, but gender differences were found in some contexts. For example in the context of hurt reputation, females had a higher degree of anger than males, and in the context of physical hurt, females' degree of forgiveness was significantly higher than males'.(4) No significant grade effect on the degree of emotional responses, perceived harm and forgiveness were found, but in some contexts we found grade differences.(5) In this study we found the degree of anger and perceived hurt had significant positive correlation, but both had significant negative correlation with the degree of forgiveness.(6) Adolescents indicated significant grade difference on explaining the degree of forgiveness in the context of hurt. Students of Grade Two in junior high school were inclined to explain the degree of forgiveness on the basis of closeness, students in senior high school on the basis of offender's traits and moral request, and university students on the basis of intent.(7) In some contexts significant gender difference were found on explaining the degree of forgiveness. Males were more likely to explain this on the basis of closeness and severity.IIAbstract(8) Adolescents indicated significant difference of companion types for explaining the degree of forgiveness in the context of hurt. For good friends they were likely to consider closeness as an explanation, but for general schoolmates they considered the degree of severity.(9) With regard to different hurt incidents, the reasons of given explaining the degree of forgiveness had significant differences.