194 VOLUME 10, NUMBER 6, DECEMBER 2001 Forgiveness: Who Does It and How Do They Do It? Michael E. McCullough Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas Abstract Forgiveness is a suite of prosocial motivational changes that occurs after a person has in- curred a transgression. People who are inclined to forgive their transgressors tend to be more agreeable, more emotionally sta- ble, and, some research sug- gests, more spiritually or religiously inclined than people who do not tend to forgive their transgressors. Several psycho- logical processes appear to fos- ter or inhibit forgiveness. These processes include empathy for the transgressor, generous attri- butions and appraisals regard- ing the transgression and transgressor, and rumination about the transgression. Inter- preting these findings in light of modern trait theory would help to create a more unified understanding of how personal- ity might influence forgiveness. Keywords forgiveness; research; review; personality; theory Relating to otherswhether strangers, friends, or family-inev- itably exposes people to the risk of being offended or harmed by those other people. Throughout history and across cultures, people have developed many strategies for re- sponding to such transgressions. Two classic responses are avoidance and revenge seeking distance from the transgressor or opportunities to harm the transgressor in kind. These responses are normal and common, but can have negative conse- quences for individuals, relation- ships, and perhaps society as a whole. Psychologists have been investi- gating interpersonal transgressions and their aftermath for years. How- ever, although many of the world's religions have advocated the con- cept of forgiveness as a productive response to such transgressions (McCullough & Worthington, 1999), scientists have begun only recently to devote sustained attention to for- giveness. Nevertheless, researchers have made substantial progress in illuminating forgiveness during this short amount of time. WHAT IS FORGIVENESS? Most psychologists concur with Enright, Gassin, and Wu (1992) that forgiveness is distinct from pardon (which is more apposite to the legal realm), condonation (which implies justifying the transgression), and excusing (which implies recognition that the transgressor had a good reason for committing the trans- gression). Most scholars also concur that forgiveness is distinct from rec- onciliation a term implying resto- ration of a relationship. But what is forgiveness foundationally? The first definition for "forgive" in Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (1983) is "to give up re- sentment against or the desire to punish; to stop being angry with; to pardon (p. 720). Although this definition conflates the concepts of forgiveness and pardon, it nearly suffices as an adequate psychologi- cal definition because it points to what is perhaps the essence of for- giveness: prosocial motivational change on the victim's part. By us- ing the term "prosocial," I am sug- gesting that when people forgive, they become less motivated to harm their transgressor (or their relation- ship with the transgressor) and, si- multaneously, become more moti- vated to act in ways that will benefit the transgressor (or their re- lationship with the transgressor). My colleagues and I have as- sumed that most people are moti- vated (at least initially) to respond to transgressions with other forms of negative behaviorparticularly, to avoid contact with the transgres- sor and to seek revenge. When peo- ple forgive, they counteract or modulate these motivations to avoid or seek revenge so that the probability of restoring benevolent and harmonious interpersonal re- lations with their transgressors is increased (McCullough, Bellah, Kil- patrick, & Johnson, 2001; Mc- Cullough et al., 1998; McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997). When people indicate that they have for- given a transgressor, we believe they are indicating that their perceptions of the transgression and transgres- sor no longer stimulate motivations for avoidance and revenge. Instead, a forgiver experiences the return of benevolent, constructive motivations regarding the transgressor. In this conceptualization, forgiveness is not a motivation per se, but rather, a complex of prosocial changes in one's motivations. Locating forgiveness at the mo- tivational level, rather than at the level of overt behaviors, accommo- dates the fact that many people who would claim to have forgiven someone who has harmed them might not behave in any particu- larly new and benevolent way to- ward their transgressors. Forgive- ness might not cause an employee who forgives her boss for an insult to behave any less negatively to- ward the boss: Avoidance and re- Published by Blackwell Publishers Inc. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 195 venge in the workplace can put one's job at risk, so most people are probably careful to inhibit the ex- pression of such negative motiva- tions in the first place, regardless of how strong they might have been as a result of the transgression. The motivational definition does imply, however, that the employee would experience a reduced potential for avoidant and vengeful behavior (and an increased potential for be- nevolent behavior) toward the boss, which might or might not be ex- pressed overtly. A motivational defi- nition also accommodates the fact that someone can make public ges- tures of forgiveness toward his or her transgressor even in the absence of such prosocial motivational changes. How would one describe the sorts of people who tend to engage in the motivational transformations collectively called forgiveness? What psychological processes ap- pear to help people forgive? Several research teams have been investi- gating these questions in detail. In this article, I describe what psycho- logical science has revealed about who tends to forgive and the psy- chological processes that may fos- ter or hinder forgiveness for spe- cific transgressions. THE FORGIVING PERSONALITY Researchers have found that the disposition to forgive is correlated (positively or negatively) with a broad array of variables, including several personality traits, psychologi- cal symptoms, moral emotions, hope, and self-esteem (e.g., see Berry, Worthington, Parrott, O'Connor, & Wade, in press; Tangney, Fee, Reinsmith, Boone, & Lee, 1999). For simplicity, it is useful to reduce this potentially bewildering array of cor- relates to a smaller set of higher- order personality factors, such as those in the Five Factor (or Big Five) personality taxonomy (McCrae & Costa, 1999). Several recent research efforts suggest that the disposition to forgive may be related most strongly to two of these higher-order dimensions: agreeableness and emo- tional stability (Ashton, Paunonen, Helmes, & Jackson, 1998; Berry et al., in press; McCullough et al., 2001; Mc- Cullough & Hoyt, 1999). Some evi- dence also suggests that the disposi- tion to forgive is related positively to religiousness and spirituality. Agreeableness Agreeableness is a personality di- mension that incorporates traits such as altruism, empathy, care, and gen- erosity. Highly agreeable people tend to thrive in the interpersonal realm and experience less conflict in rela- tionships than less agreeable peo- ple do. Trait theorists and research- ers have long been aware that agreeable people typically are rated highly on descriptors such as "forgiving" and low on descriptors such as "vengeful." Research specifi- cally on the disposition to forgive has also confirmed the agreeableness-for- giveness association (Ashton et al., 1998; McCullough & Hoyt, 1999). People who appear disposition- ally inclined to forgive also possess many of the lower-order traits that agreeableness subsumes. For in- stance, compared with people who are not inclined to forgive, they tend to be less exploitative of and more empathic toward others (Tangney et al., 1999). They also report higher levels of moral responsibility and demonstrate a greater tendency to share resources with people who have been rude and inconsiderate to them (Ashton et al., 1998). Emotional Stability Emotional stability is a personal- ity dimension that involves low vul- nerability to experiences of negative emotion. Emotionally stable people also tend not to be moody or overly sensitive. Several studies demonstrate that people who are high in emo- tional stability score higher on mea- sures of the disposition to forgive than do their less emotionally sta- ble counterparts (Ashton et al., 1998; Berry et al., in press; Mc- Cullough & Hoyt, 1999). Religiousness and Spirituality A third personality trait that might be related to the disposition to forgive and one that recent re- search suggests is empirically dis- tinct from the Big Five personality factors is religiousness or spiritu- ality. A review of results from seven studies suggested that peo- ple who consider themselves to be highly religious or spiritual tend to value forgiveness more highly and see themselves as more forgiv- ing than do people who consider themselves less religious or spiri- tual (McCullough & Worthington, 1999). Despite the consistency of the ex- isting evidence on this point, few studies have addressed whether religiousness and spirituality are associated with forgiving specific transgressors for specific, real-life transgressions. Indeed, studies ad- dressing this issue hint that reli- giousness-spirituality and forgive- ness of individual transgressions may be essentially unrelated (e.g., McCullough & Worthington, 1999). Therefore, it is possible that reli- gious and spiritual people are no more forgiving than are less reli- gious and spiritual people in real life, but only believe themselves (or aspire) to be highly forgiving. The connection of religiousness and spirituality to forgiveness of actual transgressions remains to be inves- tigated more fully (McCullough & Worthington, 1999). Copyright 2001 American Psychological Society 196 WHAT DO PEOPLE DO WHEN THEY FORGIVE? Recent research has also helped to illuminate the psychological pro- cesses that people employ when they forgive. The processes that have been studied to date include empathy, at- tributions and appraisals, and rumi- nation. Empathy for the Transgressor Empathy has been defined by some scholars as the vicarious ex- perience of another person's emo- tional state, and by others as a spe- cific emotion characterized by compassion, tenderness, and sym- pathy. Empathy (defined as a spe- cific emotional state) for a particu- lar transgressor correlates strongly with the extent to which a victim forgives the transgressor for a par- ticular transgression. In several cor- relational studies (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998; Worthington et al., 2000), people's reports of the extent to which they had forgiven a spe- cific transgressor were highly cor- related with the extent to which they experienced empathy for the trans- gressor. Empathy also helps explain why some social-psychological variables influence forgiveness. The well- known effect of transgressors' apolo- gies on victims' likelihood of for- giving apparently is almost totally mediated by the effects of the apol- ogies on victims' empathy for the transgressors (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998). When transgressors apologize, they implicitly express some degree of fallibility and vul- nerability, which might cause vic- tims to feel empathic, thereby mo- tivating them to forgive the transgressors. Also, research on psy- chological interventions designed to help people forgive specific trans- gressors has revealed that empathy fosters forgiveness. Indeed, empa- thy for the transgressor is the only VOLUME 10, NUMBER 6, DECEMBER 2001 psychological variable that has, to date, been shown to facilitate for- giveness when induced experimen- tally (McCullough et al., 1997; Wor- thington et al., 2000), although experimental research on this issue is still in its infancy. Generous Attributions and Appraisals Another factor associated with the extent to which someone for- gives a specific transgressor is the extent to which the victim makes generous attributions and apprais- als about the transgression and transgressor. Compared with peo- ple who have not forgiven their transgressors, people who have for- given their transgressors appraise the transgressors as more likable (Bradfield & Aquino, 1999), and the transgressors' explanations for the transgressions as more adequate and honest (Shapiro, 1991). In such situa- tions, forgiveness is also related to the victim's appraisal of the sever- ity of the transgression (Shapiro, 1991). People who tend to forgive their spouses also tend to attribute less responsibility to their spouses for their negative behavior than do people who do not tend to forgive their spouses (Fincham, 2000). Thus, forgivers apparently are in- clined to give their transgressors 'the benefit of the doubt." Whether the correlations between apprais- als-attributions and forgiveness re- flect the causal effects of attributional and appraisal processes, or simply reflect victims' accurate perceptions of the actual qualities of transgres- sors and transgressions that cause them to be more or less forgivable, remains to be explored more fully in the future. " Rumination About the Transgression A third factor associated with the extent to which someone for- gives a specific transgressor is the extent to which the victim rumi- nates about the transgression. Ru- mination, or the tendency to expe- rience intrusive thoughts, affects, and images about past events, ap- pears to hinder forgiveness. The more people brood about a trans- gression, the higher are their levels of revenge and avoidance motivation (McCullough et al., 1998, 2001). In a recent longitudinal study, my col- leagues and I also found that vic- tims who continued to ruminate about a particular transgression made considerably less progress in forgiving the transgressor during an 8-week follow-up period (Mc- Cullough et al., 2001). This longitudi- nal evidence indicates that the de- gree to which people reduce their ruminations about a particular trans- gression over time is a good predic- tor of how much progress they will make in forgiving their transgressor. FUTURE RESEARCH AND THEORY So far, research has shown that people who are more agreeable, more emotionally stable, and (possi- bly) more spiritual or religious have a stronger disposition to forgive than do their less agreeable, less emotion- ally stable, and less spiritually and religiously inclined counterparts. Moreover, research has shown that empathizing with the transgressor, making generous attributions and appraisals regarding the transgres- sor and transgression, and refrain- ing from rumination about the transgression are associated with the extent to which a victim forgives a specific transgressor. An interesting step for future research on the personality factors and psychological mechanisms as- sociated with forgiveness would be to explore the specific cognitive and emotional habits of agreeable, emo- tionally stable, and (perhaps) reli- Published by Blackwell Publishers Inc. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 197 giously or spiritually inclined peo- ple that predispose them to forgive. For example, agreeableness reflects a tendency toward kindness and prosociality, so perhaps agreeable people are particularly inclined to experience empathy for their trans- gressors. They might also be inclined to perceive the transgressions they have incurred as less intentional and less severe, and their transgressors as more likable and contrite, than do less agreeable people. Likewise, emotionally stable people might find forgiveness eas- ier than people who are less emo- tionally stable because of percep- tual processes: Emotionally stable people perceive many environmen- tal factors including physical pain and negative life events-less neg- atively than do less emotionally sta- ble people. Emotionally stable peo- ple also ruminate less about negative life events. Research addressing such potential links between personality traits and psychological processes would enrich psychology's under- standing of how personality might influence the extent to which peo- ple forgive particular transgressors. Such empirical advances should be coupled with theoretical refine- ments. It might prove particularly useful to frame such investigations in the context of modern trait the- ory. Trait theorists such as McCrae and Costa (1999) have advocated for conceptualizing the empirical links between traits and real-life behavioral proclivities as causal connections that reflect how basic tendencies (i.e., traits) are "channelized" into characteristic adaptations, or approaches to negotiat- ing life within one's own cultural and environmental context. Using Mc- Crae and Costa's framework to theo- rize about forgiveness might explain how the basic, biologically based tendencies that are reflected in mea- sures of higher-order personality di- mensions lead people to use for- giveness to address certain problems encountered in daily lifenamely, interpersonal transgressions. Such a theoretical framework could lead to other interesting questions: Insofar as forgiveness can be viewed as a characteristic adapta- tion of agreeable and emotionally stable people, why might agreeable and emotionally stable people be predisposed to use forgiveness for navigating their social worlds? Is for- giveness a by-product of other char- acteristic adaptations resulting from agreeableness and emotional stabil- ity (such as a capacity for empathy, a tendency to make generous attribu- tions regarding the negative be- havior of other people, or an ability to refrain from rumination about negative events)? Or is it more ac- curate to view forgiveness as a goal to which agreeable and emotion- ally stable people actively strive, using the other characteristic psy- chological adaptations (e.g., capac- ity for empathy, tendency to form generous attributions, disinclination to ruminate) associated with agree- ableness and emotional stability as footholds on the climb toward that goal? Answers to these questions would raise even more interesting questions. In any case, more so- phisticated theorizing would trans- form this new area of research from simply a search for the corre- lates of forgiveness to a quest to truly understand forgiveness and its place in human personality and social functioning. Recommended Reading (See References) McCrae, R.R., & Costa, P.T., Jr. (1999). McCullough, M.E., Bellah, C.G., Kil- patrick, S.D., & Johnson, J.L. (2001). (See References) McCullough, M.E., Pargament, K.I., & Thoresen, C.T. (Eds.). (2000). Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Guilford. McCullough, M.E., Rachal, K.C., Sandage, S.J., Worthington, E.L., Brown, S.W., & Hight, T.L. (1998). (See References) McCullough, M.E., & Worthington, E.L. (1999). (See References) Note 1. Address correspondence to Michael McCullough, Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, PO Box 750442, Dallas, TX 75275-0442; e-mail: mikem@mail. smu.edu. References Ashton, M.C., Paunonen, S.V., Helmes, E., & Jack- son, D.N. (1998). Kin altruism, reciprocal altru- ism, and the Big Five personality factors. Evolution and Human Behavior, 19, 243-255. Berry, J.W., Worthington, E.L., Parrott, L., O'Con- nor, L.E., & Wade, N.G. (in press). Disposi- tional forgivingness: Development and construct validity of the Transgression Narra- tive Test of Forgivingness (TNTF). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Bradfield, M., & Aquino, K. (1999). The effects of blame attributions and offender likeableness on forgiveness and revenge in the workplace. Journal of Management, 25, 607631. Enright, R.D., Gassin, E.A., & Wu, C. (1992). For- giveness: A developmental view. Journal of Moral Education, 21, 99114. Fincham, F.D. (2000). The kiss of the porcupines: From attributing responsibility to forgiving. Personal Relationships, 7, 123. McCrae, R.R., & Costa, P.T., Jr. (1999). A five-fac- tor theory of personality. In L.A. Pervin & O.P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 139-153). New York: Guilford. McCullough, M.E., Bellah, C.G., Kilpatrick, S.D., & Johnson, J.L. (2001). Vengefulness: Relation- ships with forgiveness, rumination, well-be- ing, and the Big Five. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 601-610. McCullough, M.E., & Hoyt, W.T. (1999, August). Recovering the person from interpersonal forgiving. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston. McCullough, M.E., Rachal, K.C., Sandage, S.J., Worthington, E.L., Brown, S.W., & Hight, T.L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close rela- tionships: II. Theoretical elaboration and mea- surement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1586-1603. McCullough, M.E., & Worthington, E.L. (1999). Religion and the forgiving personality. Journal of Personality, 67, 1141-1164. McCullough, M.E., Worthington, E.L., & Rachal, K.C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close re- lationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psy- chology, 73, 321-336. Shapiro, D.L. (1991). The effects of explanations on negative reactions to deceit. Administrative Sci- ence Quarterly, 36, 614-630. Tangney, J., Fee, R., Reinsmith, C., Boone, A.L., & Lee, N. (1999, August). Assessing individual dif- ferences in the propensity to forgive. Paper pre- sented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston. Webster's new universal unabridged dictionary. (1983). New York: Dorset and Baker. Worthington, E.L., Kurusu, T.A., Collins, W., Berry, J.W., Ripley, J.S., & Baier, S.N. (2000). Forgiving usually takes time: A lesson learned by study- ing interventions to promote forgiveness. Jour- nal of Psychology and Theology, 28, 320. Copyright 2001 American Psychological Society