Evaluate Emotional and Decisional Forgiveness

Following a painful experience like those reported by women in the “me too” movement, many may work to forgive their offender to free themselves from the ongoing internal struggle caused by rehearsing the event and nursing anger.

Forgiveness, of course, should not be construed as excusing, pardoning, or tolerating abuse. Neither should survivors' forgiveness of their offenders reduce the responsibility of government and business leaders to act justly and provide safeguards against future offenses.

When people begin to work on forgiveness toward offenders for particularly horrific offenses like rape and murder, they may find strong emotions like anger and the desire for revenge make it seem impossible to overcome. Ev Worthington (Virginia Commonwealth University) and his colleagues have published two measures of forgiveness that divide forgiveness into two parts: Emotional and Decisional.

This makes sense to me as a clinician, a scientist, and a person who, like many, have had to forgive others. I had called the decisional part “dutiful” forgiveness because many cultures, including religious cultures, look at forgiveness as a duty. Thus, a person may act according to a sense of duty and decide to forgive an offender. They may find they are able to stop seeking revenge or stop avoiding their offender.

But, despite the decision to forgive an offender, the forgiver can be troubled by strong emotions, which persist despite the "decisional forgiveness." So, it can seem as if one has made little progress in forgiving, if the strong emotions persist. 

I think having two dimensions to consider may be helpful to survivors who wish to measure their progress in two different ways. The two measures can help clinicians as they guide clients through forgiveness and note that progress may be uneven. For example, the emotional aspect may proceed more slowly than the decisional aspect. Of course, researchers may also find the two measures helpful as additions to their surveys about relationships and counseling outcomes.

I will provide a link below to the two scales along with data indicating they have a history of reasonable values for reliability and validity statistics in published articles.

Following are examples:

DECISIONAL FORGIVENESS SCALE

	Strongly Disagree (SD)	Disagree (D)	Neutral (N)	Agree (A)	Strongly Agree (SA)
1. I intend to try to hurt him or her in the same way he or she hurt me.	SD	D	N	A	SA
2. I will not try to help him or her if he or she needs something.	SD	D	N	A	SA

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EMOTIONAL FORGIVENESS SCALE

	Strongly Disagree (SD)	Disagree (D)	Neutral (N)	Agree (A)	Strongly Agree (SA)
1. I care about him or her.	SD	D	N	A	SA
2. I no longer feel upset when I think of him or her.	SD	D	N	A	SA

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The two forgiveness scales

[I would include the entire scales here but they are published in copyrighted works. Researchers and educators may use the scales for non-commercial purposes. You can find a downloadable pdf file on Researchgate:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286221719_Measures_of_Forgiveness 

Resource Link:  A – Z Test Index

Resource: Books About Forgiveness

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FORGIVENESS: Trait Forgiveness Scale (TFS)

Scale Name: Trait Forgiveness Scale (TFS)

There are several questionnaires that can help individuals, clinicians, and researchers discover levels of forgiveness. As you might suspect, the different measures reflect different ideas about forgiveness.

In this post I will look at trait forgiveness rather than state forgiveness. I am using trait in a psychological sense to mean a disposition or tendency—a behavior pattern that we might consider a part of someone’s personality. Psychological scientists sometimes refer to trait forgiveness as dispositional forgiveness or forgivingness.

Trait forgiveness stands in contrast to a particular state of forgiveness. For example, a person may think about a specific offender and a specific event and respond to questions on a “state” scale to indicate their current progress in forgiving the offender.

We should also keep in mind that most older forgiveness scales focused on victims forgiving another person rather than forgiving themselves.

Trait Forgiveness Scale

The trait forgiveness scale was developed by several psychological scientists (Berry, Worthington, O’Connor, Parrott, & Wade, 2005). There are 10-items, which are rated on a 5-point likert-type scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. As you can see, scores could range from 10 to 50. 

Following are the phrases for each numerical rating.

5 = Strongly Agree

4 = Mildly Agree

3 = Agree and Disagree Equally

2 = Mildly Disagree

1 = Strongly Disagree

Reliability data have been reported in the range of .74 to .80 using Chronbach’s alpha. Two colleagues and I found alpha = .81 in a Christian sample (Sutton, Jordan, & Worthington, 2014).

Forgiveness items

Following are two items that will give you a sense of how the developers think about trait forgiveness.

_______    1.  People close to me probably think I hold a grudge too long.

_______    2.  I can forgive a friend for almost anything.

In the Berry et al. article, the authors provide average scores for men and women in four samples. The mean scores for men ranged from 30.4 to 36.3 and for women, 31.3 to 34.9.

You can find the full 10-items of the Trait Forgiveness Scale on pages 222 - 223 of the Berry et al., (2005) reference listed below.

Learn more about scales and survey items in Creating Surveys. A handy reference for clinicians and researchers.

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Resource: Books About Forgiveness

References

Berry, J. W., Worthington, E. R., O'Connor, L. E., Parrott, L., & Wade, N. G. (2005). Forgivingness, vengeful rumination, and affective traits. Journal of Personality, 73, 183-225. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00308.x   Click for Online link

Sutton, G. W., Jordan, K., & Worthington, E.L., Jr. (2014). Spirituality, hope, compassion, and forgiveness: Contributions of Pentecostal spirituality to godly love. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 33, 212-226. ResearchGate 

Counselors and students in counselor education programs may find Applied Statistics for Counselors also relevant.  See Applied Statistics on AMAZON.

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Learn more about forgiveness in Chapter 6 of  Living Well

Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

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