Conversations with God: How Are Religion and Spirituality Used to Make Sense of Forgiveness?

Forgiveness has a connection to religion and spirituality. Yet, little is known about how religious and spiritual people actually forgive. The present study investigated how religion and spirituality are used to make sense of forgiveness. The narratives of seven interviewees were chosen for close analysis of their experiences of forgiveness. McAdams's life story interview method and narrative analysis were applied. Five themes were formulated: (1) forgiveness as Christian duty, (2) forgiveness as God's miracle, (3) forgiveness through praying, (4) forgiveness through God's sacrifice, and (5) forgiveness as God's mercy. The findings indicate that God was important to the interviewees and supported their forgiveness process. Subthemes of revenge and justice suggest that sometimes forgiveness and revenge motives may be intertwined. Forgiveness was a divine process for the participants, and some felt that they would not have been able to forgive without God. Attributing forgiveness to God may serve the forgiveness process.

Social baseline theory: State of the science and new directions

Social baseline theory (SBT) maintains that the primary human ecology is a social ecology. Because of this fact, the theory predicts that humans will find it easier and less energetically taxing to regulate emotion and act when in proximity to familiar and predictable others. This article reviews new empirical and theoretical work related to SBT and highlights areas of needed research. Among these exciting developments are investigations of the neural mechanisms of social emotion regulation, the creation of a model of social allostasis, and work investigating at the impact of social proximity in real-world contexts. SBT continues to accrue support and inspire new theoretical and empirical contributions.

Situated Embodiment: When Physical Weight Does and Does Not Inform Judgments of Importance

Bodily sensations impact metaphorically related judgments. Are such effects obligatory or do they follow the logic of knowledge accessibility? If the latter, the impact of sensory information should be moderated by the accessibility of the related metaphor at the time of sensory experience. We manipulated whether “importance” was on participants’ minds when they held a physically heavy versus light book. Participants held the book while making an importance judgment versus returned it before making the judgment (Study 1) or learned prior to holding the book that the study was about “importance evaluations” versus “graphics evaluations” (Study 2). In both studies, the same book was judged more important when its heft was increased but only when importance was on participants’ minds at the time of sensory experience. We conclude that sensory experiences only impact metaphorically related judgments when the applicable metaphor is highly accessible at the time of experience.

When Forgiveness Signals Power: Effects of Forgiveness Expression and Forgiver Gender

Forgiveness has been regarded as a sign of power, yet empirical evidence is mixed. This research seeks to resolve this inconsistency by looking into how and from whom forgiveness is expressed. Integrating theories on forgiveness, communication, and gender role, we hypothesized and found, in two experiments, that a third party’s perception of forgiver power is jointly influenced by forgiveness expression (explicit vs. implicit) and forgiver gender. Female forgivers were perceived as less powerful than their male counterparts when forgivers expressed implicit forgiveness, whereas this gender difference was not found when forgivers expressed explicit forgiveness. Perceived forgiver power, in turn, positively influenced third parties’ cooperation with the forgiver in subsequent interaction. This research represents an initial step to understanding forgiveness from a communication perspective. It demonstrates the social implications of forgiveness on uninvolved third parties. Our findings also resonate with several others in showing that forgiveness does not always yield interpersonal benefits.

When group members forgive: Antecedents and consequences

Whether forgiveness is essential for intergroup reconciliation may be disputable, but its potential ability to repair human relationships following offenses committed based on group membership remains of considerable importance. The primary focus of this Special Issue is on the social-contextual factors that encourage forgiveness of past wrongs and the extent to which forgiveness results in meaningful improvement in intergroup relations. The concept of intergroup forgiveness has only appeared on the research agenda of social psychologists over the last decade, so there is still much room for conceptual clarification, empirical validation, and applications to understanding intergroup reconciliation. Significant progress has been made by investigating predictors and correlates of intergroup forgiveness, and the research presented in this Special Issue further illuminates the processes involved in intergroup forgiveness, as well as important consequences. This collection of empirical articles, based on diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches to studying the phenomenon of intergroup forgiveness inside and outside of the laboratory, advance our understanding of when and how improvement emerges across a wide range of real and enduring conflicts.