Forgiveness

Section One: Studying Forgiveness F

by Everett L. Worthington, Jr.

Most of the world religions value forgiveness, but until 1968, no scientific study of forgiveness was undertaken. Since that time, scientific research on forgiveness has steadily accelerated (McCullough, Exline, & Baumeister, 1997). I graphed the number of scientific studies on forgiveness versus time on a chart attached. Several excellent scientific studies have been done, but progress in science is usually cumulative rather than through a single study (unless it is a true break-through study like the Michaelson-Morley study that began modern physics). Thus, below, I provide a brief summary of three programs of research that can illustrate spiritual progress through scientific research.

Robert Enright's Studies of Development of Thinking about Forgiveness Enright and his collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a series of studies throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s that showed that thinking about forgiveness developed much like reasoning about moral issues. Typically, Enright would sample children of three ages-say early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. He developed a theory about the type of thinking regarding forgiveness one might expect from children of each age patterned on Lawrence Kohlberg's research on moral development. Children in early childhood usually thought very concretely and with great self-focus about justice. Those in middle childhood usually thought more abstractly. Adolescents usually reasoned using some principled thinking. Such studies have been done in the United States (Enright, Santos, & Al-Mabuk, 1989), Taiwan (Huang & Enright, 1992), and Seoul, Korea (Park & Enright, 1993). In the study by Huang and Enright (1992), the researchers identified people who reasoned in principled reasoning (stage 6) and those who reasoned using more concrete reasoning (stage 4). They found that stage- 6 reasoners did not mask their conflict over whether to forgive with smiles whereas stage-4 reasoners did. Robert Enright's Studies of Interventions to Promote Forgiveness As the decade has progressed, Enright has turned from investigations of how people think about forgiveness to study one way to help people forgive others whom they struggle to forgive. He has developed a 20-step intervention that addresses how people behave, think, and feel when unforgiving and which helps them to change each of those components into a more forgiving stance. Enright has applied this with adolescents who reported being deprived of love by one or both parents (Al-Mabuk, Enright & Cardis, 1995), elderly people in nursing homes (Hebl & Enright, 1993), survivors of sexual abuse (Freedman & Enright, 1996), and men whose partners had abortions (Coyle & Enright, 1997). Perhaps one of the most difficult hurts to forgive is the perpetration of sexual abuse on a young girl. Freedman and Enright provided counseling, using Enright's model, to women for an average of 60 weeks. At the end of the counseling, the women reported having forgiven their abuser. Michael McCullough and Everett Worthington's Empathy-based Model of Forgiveness McCullough, Worthington, and their colleagues have published three articles reporting on the role of empathy in forgiving and in helping people forgive. Typically, McCullough, Worthington, et al. have studied adults with a variety of offenses they are trying to forgive (such as parents who hurt them, romantic partners who hurt them, employers who have offended them, etc.). McCullough and Worthington (1995) found a brief empathy-based intervention was as effective as an intervention that promoted forgiveness by appealing to people to forgive because it is good for you (your health, your emotions, your spirit) to forgive one who hurt you. McCullough, Worthington, and Rachal (1997) conducted several studies that they reported within the same article. They found that an empathy-based intervention lasting 8 hours was quite superior at helping people forgive to the self-enhancement 8-hour intervention. Furthermore, people in the empathy-based intervention continued to be more forgiving after the study was over, while the people in the self-enhancement condition lost some of the forgiveness they had achieved. In addition, regardless of what intervention people attended, the ones who developed empathy for their offender forgave their offender while the ones who did not develop a compassionate empathy for their offender did not forgive him or her. McCullough, Rachal, Sandage, Worthington, Brown, and Hight (1998-in press) have just completed a series of four other studies showing the key role of empathy in forgiving. McCullough and Worthington's programmatic research promised to uncover some of the mechanisms underlying the how and why of forgiveness.

Section Two: CNN Broadcast Eye For An Eye GREENFIELD: Learning to forgive: It's a nice idea in principle. It's a difficult one to put into practice, because the impulse to nurse and to hold a grudge is very deeply embedded in us. Indeed, during her interview with Christiane Amanpour, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said that forgiveness was a challenge. Well, it now turns out that the pursuit of revenge may be downright unhealthy. Eileen O'Connor explores the danger of rage and the power of forgiveness. EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What happened to Aba Gayle was unforgivable.

GAYLE: I hated because someone took the life of my youngest child, my daughter Catherine, when she was only 19 years old. He murdered her. O'CONNOR: In 1980, a man came into the house where Aba Gayle's daughter Catherine was staying and stabbed her and her friend to death. Her mother wanted what anyone would. GAYLE: I wanted revenge. I wanted someone to pay for what had happened to Catherine. O'CONNOR: The killer was caught and sent to death row in California. Yet that wasn't enough for Aba Gayle. She was so angry, her rage virtually disabled her. She sat up nights imagining the kind of suffering her daughter's murderer really deserved, but instead she was the one who suffered. GAYLE: It just consumed my life. It was an overwhelming experience, and it's physically very painful to be in anger and rage all the time. O'CONNOR: The revenge that should have tasted so sweet to Aba Gayle left her a bitter woman instead. WORTHINGTON: People could get over their unforgiving by simply forgetting the event that offended or hurt them. O'CONNOR: But how does one "get over" the murder of a loved one? How do you forgive that? Everett Worthington is director of the Templeton Forgiveness Research Campaign. This religious foundation has spent over $5 million funding 29 studies in places like Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and South Africa, places where the practice of "an eye for an eye" justice became an art form. WORTHINGTON: They were not forgiving. O'CONNOR: The idea is to find ways by which forgiveness can be monitored and measured,... UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST: ... so that sins may be forgiven. O'CONNOR: ... taking it from the pulpit into the lab. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So if you could chew on that for one minute... O'CONNOR: Worthington's own research looks at the most intimate battlefield of all: marriage. Here therapists have one spouse think of the other and their most recent discussion. They don't use words like "fight" here. Then they measure chemicals in the saliva, showing physical changes that indicate good or bad feelings. Taking cues from answers to standardized tests, the counseling begins. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What kind of things have you been feeling lately? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Knowing her condition and knowing it's not her fault, I don't want to blurt out something that I'm going to regret.

O'CONNOR: Brink and his pregnant wife Jennifer are just finishing their session, learning Worthington's step-by-step process of forgiveness, a process that involves working through the anger, accepting the hurt. But more importantly, it is a process that centers on empathy. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... when I get angry and frustrated. WORTHINGTON: We've done several studies that really show that empathy for the other person is the most essential part of forgiveness. And it probably is the hardest. When someone has done something terrible to you, to be able to see things from that person's point of view is -- is an unnatural act. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've tried to imagine carrying 50 extra pounds on my belly. I'll always try and keep in mind her state right now. Do you forgive me? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, definitely. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jennifer, how does it feel to hear Brink apologize in that way? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It takes the hurt away. O'CONNOR: So according to the Worthington method, all you have to do is put yourself in the other person's shoes -- sounds easy enough. But in a twist of tragic irony, Worthington found how difficult it can be to practice what he preaches. Just one day after mailing his manuscript on forgiveness to his publishers, the telephone rang. WORTHINGTON: I remember New Year's Day receiving a call from my brother, and he said, you know, "Something terrible has happened." O'CONNOR: Their mother had been murdered, beaten to death after she surprised a burglar in her home. WORTHINGTON: I got so angry, and I remember looking down at the wall and seeing a baseball bat and saying, "I wish that whoever did this was here right now. I would - - I would beat his brains out." Here I was, unable to forgive this person. And I asked myself, "Who did I wright this book for? Is this for everybody else?" And the uncomfortable answer was that, no, this really was for me, too. O'CONNOR: To let go of his anger, to forgive his mother's killer, his own research dictated Worthington would actually have to imagine what it would be like to be the killer. WORTHINGTON: It's a New Year's Eve, and I can imagine them looking at the house and saying, "We're going to commit a perfect crime. This house is dark, there's probably nobody home." I can imagine what it must have been like for this kid to hear behind him a voice say something like, "What are you doing here?" He turns around, and there's this woman standing, looking at him. He thinks, "Oh, my gosh. This is not the way its supposed to be. This is going be a perfect crime, but now I've been seen. I'm going to jail. My plans are spoiled."

O'CONNOR: Worthington says he was able to understand the young man who beat his mother to death. He says he's been able to forgive his mother's murderer. (on camera): But you know, there's a lot of people out there who are going to say what you did really is cowardly. What do you say to them? WORTHINGTON: Whether I forgive a person really is a separate question from whether I want to see justice done. I feel like can't imprison him by holding unforgiveness towards him. O'CONNOR (voice-over): Worthington is no longer nursing his anger and has found a degree of peace. Researchers say there is actually a physiological reason for that. People like Worthington, they say, benefit physically from being able to forgive. VAN OYEN WITVLIET: Every time you hear a medium-pitched tone, remember, your job is just to relax and think one. O'CONNOR: Professor van Oyen Witvliet of Hope College, Michigan, is studying the physical effects of forgiveness. VAN OYEN WITVLIET: Every time that you hear that high-pitched tone, your job is to engage in the grudge imagery. O'CONNOR: The volunteers are asked to remember an incident where someone had really hurt them. As they do so, a computer keeps track of their heart rates, sweat rates and other responses. VAN OYEN WITVLIET: Oh, boy you are really seeing some sweat increases here. And what we get is an on-line, moment-by-moment read out of physiology as she's thinking about these different responses to her center (ph). VAN OYEN WITVLIET: If we compare how people's physiology reacts during unforgiving and forgiving conditions, their blood-pressure increases, their heart-rate increases, and their muscle-tension increases are much greater during the unforgiving conditions. They're sweat levels are also higher. And so this suggests that their stress responses are greater during unforgiving than forgiving conditions. VAN OYEN WITVLIET: And I just need to review her skin conductance for a minute. O'CONNOR: Science is finding that forgiveness isn't just good for the soul, it's good for the body as well. VAN OYEN WITVLIET: What science can do is highlight some of the consequences of unforgiveness and of forgiveness. It can help us understand the emotional and the physiological effects of thinking and responding to offenders in these different ways. O'CONNOR: While religions may want to call forgiveness "divine," some researchers argue the need to forgive has less to do with God and more to do with genetics. DE WAAL: To forgive is divine? Then my chimpanzees are on occasion divine, I suppose.

O'CONNOR: Franz de Waal works at the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University, as director of the living link center. He is studying the behavior of chimpanzees, to determine whether forgiveness dates back to our earliest ancestors. DE WAAL: I would argue that forgiveness and reconciliation are probably much older than the Christian religion. Some religions claim it's theirs, so to speak, but it's basically elaborating on an existing mechanism that is very old, that is several million years old. O'CONNOR: De Waal studies fights between chimps and what happens afterwards. DE WAAL: When two chimpanzees have a fight, they may afterwards come together, and they kiss and embrace. And we call that a reconciliation. And it is an issue related to forgiveness. O'CONNOR: De Waal's research focuses on the social memories of chimps: how long they hold a grudge, and when and why they decide to make up. DE WAAL: It indicates that they have at least for a couple of hours, and I would think probably for days, and maybe even longer, they have memories of who has been nice to them, so to speak, and who has been nasty to them. O'CONNOR: His findings so far: there's an evolutionary basis for forgiving your rivals. It's crucial for survival of the species. In plain English, "What goes around, comes around." DE WAAL: In a cooperative system it is possible that your biggest rival is someone who you will need tomorrow. When it comes to meeting the neighbors, they need to be all united, otherwise they got clobbered by the neighbors. And so they will have to forgive their enemies, so to speak, in order to maintain their unity. O'CONNOR: But how does someone like Aba Gayle forgive the killer of her child? She wanted to see him die. After years of anger, she sat down and wrote this letter to Douglas Mickey, her daughter's killer, who sat on death row. GAYLE: You have done irreparable damage to my family and my dreams for the future. After eight long years of grief and anger, I started my journey of life. I was surprised to find that I could forgive you. This does not mean that I think you are innocent or that you are blameless for what happened. O'CONNOR: That turned out to be the first of many letters she would write him over the years. Eventually, she went to see him. She believes it has helped her get on with her life. GAYLE: Would you rather live in anger and rage and give your power away to someone else or would you like to live in peace and in a state of grace and take your power back? Because the anger and rage is tearing your body apart, and your soul. And it's not doing a thing to hurt the person that it's directed at. It only hurts you. GREENFIELD: The driving force behind the research into forgiveness is John Marks Templeton, a powerful Wall Street financier. He's funding a wide range of projects on

the subject of forgiveness, as well as other virtues, such as humility. The world of broadcast journalism ought to provide fertile ground for that one. That's CNN & TIME for tonight. A reminder: We now air at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on Sunday and Monday. On NewsStand Tuesday, "People" profiles Christopher Reeve. I'm Jeff Greenfield, for

everyone at CNN, good night

questions:

1) What is forgiveness? What is the most important aspect of forgiveness, according to Dr. Worthington?

2) What are the health benefits of forgiveness?

3) If you were in the situation faced by Gayle (her daughter was murdered), how would you have responded?

4) Describe, briefly, someone who has harmed you in some way and who you should forgive.

5) What is your overall reaction to the concept of forgiveness?