The pathway of forgiveness: unraveling the role of one’s decision to forgive

Abstract

Past research has suggested the potential benefits of forgiveness to overcome the negative consequences of experiencing interpersonal hurts. More specifically, forgiveness has been found to be very linked with health and well-being. Making a decision to forgive could be considered a permanent form of forgiving, however, no studies have examined how decisional forgiveness influences the whole process of forgiveness. The main objective of this dissertation is to study the role of making a decision to forgive in the forgiveness process. To achieve our objective, we presented three different studies. First, we present a systematic review of all the existing methods to assess forgiveness. Second, we provide a translation and validation of the Decision to Forgive Scale (DTFS) into Spanish. Third, we run a longitudinal study about how a decision to forgive influences the three major dimensions of forgiveness (i.e., avoidance, revenge, and benevolence) and how it is related to health and well-being variables. Results indicated that the Spanish version of the DTFS is a valid and reliable measure that can be used in clinical context and for research purposes. Also, the decision to forgive was found to be a predictor of change of the three major dimensions of the TRIM-18, principally of the benevolence dimension. These results suggest that developing interventions focused on decisional forgiveness may facilitate the reduction of the negative dimension of forgiveness and increase the positive one faster that others focused on emotional forgiveness.