Granting forgiveness demands self-regulation. Distinct modes of self-regulation might therefore produce distinct routes to forgiveness. Self-regulation focused on advancement (or promotion) could motivate forgiveness through the perceived benefits to be attained by repairing a relationship, i.e., one’s trust that a partner will provide such benefits rather than further betrayal. In contrast, self-regulation focused on security (or prevention) could motivate forgiveness through the perceived costs of further relationship deterioration, i.e., one’s commitment to maintain a relationship upon which one depends and protect against the loss of this relationship. These hypotheses were supported across two studies that: (a) measured and manipulated promotion-focused versus prevention-focused self-regulation, (b) included real and imagined offenses in casual and close relationships, and (c) assessed forgiveness immediately following an offense and after a two-week delay. Trust in a relationship partner more strongly predicted forgiveness among promotion-focused individuals, whereas commitment to this partner more strongly predicted forgiveness among prevention-focused individuals.
Betrayal can be enormously painful. When feeling wronged by another, people’s thoughts brim with hostility, vengeance, and reprisal. Thus, as Gandhi suggested, overcoming vengeful impulses and forgiving those who have betrayed us often demands great strength of will—perhaps even, as Pope proposes, “divine” strength.
Accordingly, psychological approaches to forgiveness place a strong emphasis on the role of willpower and self-regulation (see Exline, Worthington, Hill, & McCullough, 2003). Even for minor offenses, the basic process of forgiveness is typically defined as a “motivational transformation” in which desires for retaliation are suppressed and replaced with desires for reconciliation (Fincham et al., 2005 and McCullough et al., 1997; see McCullough, 2008 and Worthington, 2005). Furthermore, research on the antecedents and predictors of forgiveness generally reveals that circumstances that help or hinder these motivational transformations (e.g., personality traits such as agreeableness versus negative emotionality; social circumstances such as strong feelings of empathy, closeness, and commitment versus an absence of genuine remorse) also help or hinder forgiveness (Exline and Baumeister, 2000, Finkel et al., 2002, McCullough and Hoyt, 2002, McCullough et al., 1997 and McCullough et al., 1998). Finally, both brief experimental manipulations and long-term interventions that directly target people’s capacity for self-regulation have demonstrated that increasing this capacity (i.e., teaching and encouraging specific strategies for self-regulation) enhances forgiveness whereas decreasing this capacity (i.e., limiting opportunities for self-regulation by forcing quick responses to betrayals) inhibits it (Finkel and Campbell, 2001 and Wade et al., 2005).
