The Development of Self and Other Forgiveness from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood
پژوهشنامه روانشناسی مثبت(2023)
摘要
The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of self, others, and situation forgiveness from adolescence to emerging adulthood. To this end, 395 individuals, aged 12 to 25 years in four age groups living in Isfahan, Iran, were selected by cluster (for the first three groups) and available sampling (for the fourth group). The study was a cross-sectional study with using the causal-comparative design and the required data were collected with the Forgiveness Scale. The results of the analysis of variance showed that forgiveness of self had a slight decreasing trend from the beginning of adolescence to adulthood. The results also revealed that forgiveness of others declined from 12 to 16 years of age, however, it increased in emerging adulthood. Moreover, the changes in situation forgiveness were not significant in four groups. Eta squared results showed a small effect of age on the forgiveness of self (2%) and forgiveness of others (4%). Finally, there was no significant gender difference in the forgiveness of self and others in different age groups.Introduction*Forgiveness can be defined as a decision to release negative feelings, cognition, and behaviors based on a sense of sympathy, respect and grievance for guilty (Lavafpour et al., 2014). Neto et al. (2014) pointed out three forms of forgiveness: other, self, and situation forgiveness. Other forgiveness manifests itself in intentionally reducing the negative feelings and thoughts against others. Furthermore, self forgiveness refers to passionately releasing the sense of agony against oneself and conversely improving compassion and love for the self (Enright, 1996). Additionally, situation forgiveness refers to rendering all the negative thoughts and feelings surrounding the inevitable hard situations (Tompson et al., 2005). Chiaramello et al. (2008), in their study of the development of forgiveness in adolescence, found that teenagers in the middle of adolescence were less forgiving and more vindictive than in the beginning. Subkowiak et al. (1995) also found that teenagers usually forgave significantly less than adults in similar situations. After adolescence, forgiveness of others increases with age in adulthood. This is because adolescence is the time of identity formation (Berk, 2007, 2014) and emerging adulthood is the period of identity consolidation (Arnett, 2000; Lotfabadi, 2009). Moreover, different ways of socialization of boys and girls (Dastranj, 2013) may cause gender differences in their forgiveness. As such, it can be concluded that the desire to forgive has a developmental trend. This research study aimed to seek this developmental trend for forgiveness from adolescence to emerging adulthood. MethodThis study employed a cross-sectional study with a causal-comparative design. Its statistical sample included 395 individuals whose aged ranged from 12 to 25 years living in Esfahan, Iran. The group classification was a 12-year-old group (55 girls and 50 boys), a 14-year-old group (49 girls and 51 boys), a 16-year-old group (51 girls and 45 boys), and an 18-23-year-old group (48 girls and 46 boys). They were selected by cluster (for the first three groups) and available sampling (for the fourth group). The data were gathered using the Hartland Forgiveness Scale (2005). Hartland Forgiveness Scale (Thompson et al., 2005) includes 18 items in three subscales (self, other, and situation forgiveness). The items are on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (the least amount of forgiveness) to 5 (the highest amount of forgiveness). The descriptive indices (mean, standard deviation), independent group t-tests, multivariate analysis of variance, and Tukey's post hoc test were used to analyze the obtained data. ResultsAccording to the multivariate analysis of variance, there was a significant difference between age groups in the forgiveness of self and others. However, the eta squares for both variables were .02 and .04, respectively, which indicates a small effect. Self-forgiveness differed significantly only between the two groups of 12 and 18-25 years old. Self-forgiveness scores decreased among 18-25-year-olds as compared to 12-year-olds (mean diff.=1.31, p = 0.02). Nonetheless, there were significant differences between the three groups in terms of other forgiveness. There was a decrease in other forgiveness between 16-years-old group and to 12-years-old (Mean diff.=1.63, p = 0.05), and there was an increase in forgiveness for the 18-25 years-old and 14 and 16-years-old groups (Mean diff.= -1.686, p=0.05 and Mean diff.= -2.668, p=0.001). Independent t-tests were used to examine gender differences in forgiveness scores for girls and boys in each age group. Only for situation forgiveness among the12-years-old group, the gender difference was significant with an effect size of (η2=0.05, t=2.39, and p=0.01), while no difference was observed in the other groups. In the 12-year-old group, the scores of situation forgiveness were higher for boys than girls. ConclusionThe results showed that other forgiveness decreased during adolescence and reached its lowest level at the age of 16 and after that, in emerging adulthood, other forgiveness increased significantly. The research of Girard and Mallet (2012) and Chiramello et al. (2008) reported the developmental course of forgiveness of others in adolescents until the age of 15. Also, Subkowiak et al. (1995) stated that adolescents were significantly less forgiving than their same-sex parents in similar situations. As expected, the conflict of the emerging adulthood stage of intimacy versus isolation and relationships with others becomes important for the individual; therefore, the person preserves one’s valuable relationships by forgiving others' mistakes (Kaleta & Mróz, 2018). Also, the findings showed that the development of self-forgiveness has a downward slope, and the 18-25-years-old group forgave themselves significantly less than the 12-year-old group. During adolescence, when identity is formed, self-forgiveness does not change much, but with the emergence of self-esteem, self-evaluation takes place, and a person becomes more sensitive about one’s mistakes, and self-forgiveness becomes more difficult and decreases. However, this research study did not find significant changes in situation forgiveness in four groups. Unfortunately, research background focuses on the forgiveness of others, and other dimensions of forgiveness have not been carefully investigated yet. Therefore, there is little evidence to compare the findings of self-forgiveness and situation, especially during adolescence. In addition, some factors such as small effect sizes and low statistical power can limit generalization of the findings of the present study. Ethical Consideration Compliance with Ethical Guidelines: All ethical issues such as informed consent and confidentiality of participants' identity were respected. Authors’ Contributions: All authors contributed to the study. The first author wrote the first draft of the manuscript. The second and third authors edited the manuscript and the second author is corresponding author.Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest for this study. Funding: This study was conducted with no financial support and is part of M.A. thesis of the first author.Acknowledgment: The authors thank all participants in the study. *. Corresponding author
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关键词
self-forgiveness,other forgiveness,gender,adolescence,emerging adulthood
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