Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a decision as well as a complex emotional process. It involves intentionally shifting your thoughts, feelings, and motivations from negative to more positive responses, towards someone who has caused harm. It is not just an action, but rather both a decision and a developmental process.  

The researchers Worthington and colleagues³ distinguish between decisional and emotional forgiveness. Decisional forgiveness involves deliberately choosing to not retaliate or seek revenge, while emotional forgiveness is the process of replacing negative emotions like anger and hate with more positive emotions such as empathy, sympathy, and love.⁴  

Understanding what forgiveness is also means understanding what it is not. Forgiveness is not accepting or justifying harmful behavior, and it does not mean excusing wrongdoing. It is not the same as reconciliation, which requires mutual effort; forgiveness can occur even in the absence of the offender or if the offender is no longer alive.^5,6 

Saying “I forgive you” is not always evidence of true forgiveness, as it might not be genuine. It can even be manipulative, especially if used to cause guilt or gain moral superiority.⁷ Forgiveness is also not simply the absence of revenge. When you choose not to retaliate, it does not necessarily mean forgiveness has taken place.⁸ 

Emotionally, forgiveness involves letting go of resentment and forming more positive feelings toward the offender. This can be viewed as a moral virtue, similar to kindness, patience, or justice.⁵ It requires you to recognise your anger, and feelings of hurt caused by the offence, such as shame or guilt.⁹ 

Decisionally, it involves considering forgiveness as a potential response, and then committing to forgive the individual.⁹ 

In terms of how you think, forgiveness involves reframing the situation or the person who caused harm to view them with greater compassion and understanding. This includes adjusting how you feel, developing empathy, compassion, and accepting the pain experienced.⁹ 

Behaviorally, forgiveness is expressed by reduced avoidance or revenge-seeking and an increase in kind or cooperative actions.⁸ The final stage of forgiveness encourages you to find meaning in the suffering, recognize your own past mistakes, and understand that everyone experiences being hurt.⁹ This will help you find a new purpose in life because of being hurt, decreasing the negative effect and increasing the positive effect (forgiveness) from an experience.³ 

Forgiveness can be measured in several ways. Psychologists use tools like the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivation (TRIM) inventory to assess motivations for revenge, avoidance, or kind actions.³ Researchers also look at biological and behavioral signs of forgiveness, including changes in cortisol (a stress hormone) levels, heart rate, and working together in social tasks.^{10, 11} 

Children’s understanding of forgiveness grows alongside their broader emotional development. Language plays a central role. The researchers Baron-Cohen and colleagues found that only 31% of children aged four to six were able to accurately understand emotional words.¹² However, this number dramatically increased to nearly 90–100% by ages seven to eight. This suggests that children’s ability to understand complex emotional concepts like forgiveness increases significantly with age and experience with emotion words.  

Young children are already capable of forgiving—especially when they see remorse or guilt in the person who has harmed them. The researchers Vaish and Oostenbroek found that four- and five-year-olds were more likely to forgive someone who showed they felt bad in their expression, even without a verbal apology.¹³  

Remorse acts as a social-emotional signal—it communicates suffering, which can lead to sympathy, and make forgiveness more likely.¹⁴ Emotional displays such as embarrassment, sadness, or a lowered gaze are often recognized by young children as signs of guilt or regret, which can soften their emotional responses and encourage forgiveness.^{14, 15} 

From an evolutionary perspective, forgiveness may have developed to maintain essential social relationships. Humans naturally depend on each other, and rely on working with others to survive and thrive. Human survival requires success in achieving individual and group goals.¹⁶ When trust is broken through harm or betrayal, forgiveness offers a way to repair relationships and restore unity within a social group.¹⁷ 

Forgiveness is more likely when the offender expresses remorse or guilt for their actions, because it suggests they are safe to trust again.¹⁵ The other half of the process is the victim’s decision to forgive.¹³ 

There are many good reasons to forgive others! Studies show that forgiveness leads to better mental and physical health, including reduced anger, anxiety, and depression, along with increased control of emotions and improved relationship satisfaction.^{18, 19} 

In children and adolescents, forgiveness interventions have been shown to increase cooperation and reduce behavioral difficulties.^{5, 4} 

An important but often overlooked form of forgiveness is self-forgiveness, which is critical for emotional well-being. Self-forgiveness involves recognizing and taking responsibility for a mistake, feeling appropriate guilt or remorse, and then having compassion for yourself.  

Like when forgiving someone else, self-forgiveness requires changes in emotions, thoughts, and motivation, and helps children grow in resilience and self-worth. Children are capable of self-forgiveness when they have developed skills like resisting impulses, emotional regulation, and understanding consequences, which starts from around 4-5 years old.⁴ 

Artwork 

Illustrations provided by Allysa Adams

 www.allysaadamsillustration.com