When you’ve been hurt, betrayed, or disappointed by someone you care about, it’s hard to imagine giving that person another chance. Yet, forgiveness is a value that we’re taught that is basic to human relationships. Giving up on people because they’ve let you down, whether it’s your favorite sports team, a political figure, or your best friend, seems antithetical to that value.
Even though we’re taught to forgive and then give someone an opportunity to make up for past wrongs, not everyone is capable of doing so. In a July 2016 article, University of Bremen (Germany) psychologist Katja Hanke teamed up with University of Lisbon’s Christin-Melanie Vauclar to conduct a massive analysis of nearly 42,000 participants from 30 countries on cross-cultural variations in the personality trait of forgiveness. Presumably, in countries that emphasize the virtue of forgiveness, people will be more likely to espouse this trait within their own personalities.
As Hanke and Vauclar point out, we tend to think of forgiveness in interpersonal terms. Someone steps on your foot, and it really hurts, but to the best of your knowledge, it wasn’t an intentional act. When the person apologizes, you accept it as such, and don’t hold a grudge or try to strike back. Forgiveness also has a larger intergroup context, however. According to this international team, “forgiveness seems to be a critical element in breaking cycles of counterviolence in postconflict societies” (p. 217). In other words, perhaps it’s forgiveness that can lead to healing and reconciliation among nations.
[For more of this story go to https://www.psychologytoday.co...omeone-second-chance]
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