Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II: Theoretical elaboration and measurement

“…is also associated with the desire for revenge after an interpersonal transgression or slight (e.g., ‘‘I want to see her hurt and miserable’’; McCullough, Bellah, Kilpatrick, & Johnson, 2001; McCullough et al., 1998) and with increased aggression following a provo-cation (Collins & Bell, 1997).”

“These finding are consistent with research about the links among forgiveness, relationship quality, commitment, and closeness (Berry & Worthington, 2001; Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, & Hannon, 2002; McCullough et al., 1998; McCullough, 2000).”

“Although the effects of personality traits are found to be relatively weak (McCullough et al. 1998), their potential role in the rates of change in revenge and avoidance warrant further examination.”

“This potential connection would support hypothesizing by McCullough (2001) and his colleagues (McCullough et al., 1998) who have suggested that the regulation of vengeance (McCullough et al., 2001) by forgiving is a fundamentally motivational process (McCullough et al., 2002; McCullough et al.,…”

“1998) and retaliation (Aquino et al. 2001; Barclay et al. 2005; McCullough et al. 1998), we conducted a field study based on the retrospective experiences of customers.”

“However, examining the commitment–forgiveness link was a subsidiary goal in the McCullough et al. (1998) research, so the study did not provide particularly definitive evidence regarding the effects of commitment: (a) The commitment–forgiveness association was examined in only one of four studies;…”

“To capture the interpersonal aspect of forgiveness, we used the term reconciliation, which we defined as an effort by the victim to extend acts of goodwill toward the offender in the hope of restoring the relationship (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998).”

“Both subscales have high internal consistency (i.e., ␣ Ն .85), moderate test–retest stability (e.g., 8-week test–retest rs ϭ approximately .50), and evidence of convergent and discriminant validity (McCullough et al., 1998, 2001).”

“Internal consistency reliabilities (alpha) for both subscales range from .85 to .93 and test-retest reliabilities have been in the range of .44 to .65 (McCullough et al., 1998).”

“Victims feel inferior regarding their power (Foster & Rusbult, 1999), honor (Scheff, 1994), self-esteem (Scobie & Scobie, 1998), and perceived control (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994) and may experience feelings of victimization or anger (McCullough et al., 1998).”

“The TRIM (McCullough et al., 1998) is a 12-item, self-report scale for assessing avoidance of and revenge toward a transgressor.”

“lation (Mikulincer & Florian, 1998). According to Shaver and Mikulincer (2002), hyperactivating strategies involve increased vigilance to threat-related cues and a reduction in the threshold for detecting cues of attachment figures’ unavailability—the two kinds of cues that activate the attachment system (Bowlby, 1973…”

“These results complement previous results obtained by McCullough et al. (1998) with regard to ruminative thoughts about a particular offense, as well as the negative correlation reported by Berry et al. (2001) between scores on their dispositional forgiveness scale and a measure of aggressive…”

“Other work indicates forgiveness is also associated with better relationship health (e.g., Fincham, Beach, & Davila, 2007; McCullough et al., 1998; Paleari, Regalia, & Fincham, 2005).”

“The extent to which an offender apologizes and seeks forgiveness for a transgression is positively associated with the victim’s level of interpersonal forgiveness (e.g., Darby & Schenkler, 1982; McCullough et al., 1997; McCullough et al., 1998; Weiner et al., 1991).”

“They also activate repair motives, including efforts to obtain an apology from the offender, avoidance of the offender, or forgiveness of the offender (see, e.g., McCullough et al., 1998).”

“Subsequent studies further establish a positive link between forgiveness and apology (e.g., Bottom et al., 2002; Cole, Yali, & Magyar, 2002; Drinnon, 2001; Girard & Mullet, 1997; Girard, Mullet, & Callahan, 2002; Lukasik, 2001; McCullough et al., 1998; McCullough et al., 1997).”

“virtues, and gratitude ( McCullough, et al., 1998; Seligman, 2002; Peterson, & Seligman, 2003;”

“Although retrospective methods have been widely used within the service failure and retaliation literatures (e.g., Aquino et al., 2001; McCullough et al., 1998; Singh, 1988; Tax et al., 1998), there exists some potential for memory effects.”

“Both have high internal consistency (␣ Ն .85), moderate test–retest stability (e.g., 8-week test– retest rs Ϸ .50), and evidence of construct validity (McCullough et al., 2001, 1998).”

“The empathy-forgiveness link has been replicated more recently (McCullough et al., 1998).”

“Indeed, associations of psychological wellbeing with self-activated thinking about interpersonal offenses (e.g., rumination; McCullough et al., 1998) and interpersonal aspects of forgiveness represent important topics for future research.”

“In several correlational studies (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998; Worthington et al., 2000), people’s reports of the extent to which they had forgiven a specific transgressor were highly correlated with the extent to which they experienced empathy for the transgressor.”

“McCullough et al. (1998) reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for scores on both subscales ranging from .85 to .93 and estimates of 3-week temporal stability ranging from .44 to .65.”

“Anger is easier to resolve if people can obtain some insight into why the offense occurred, whether this insight comes through an explanation by the offender (e.g., Gonzales, Manning, & Haugen, 1992) or through their own ability to empathize (e.g., McCullough et al., 1998).”

“, the sort that would seemingly be motivated by anger) but also as a reduction in the motivation to avoid contact with the offender (McCullough et al., 1998; 1997).”

“Of the 70 studies reviewed, seven used the Transgression–Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (TRIM; McCullough et al., 1998), five used either Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS; Berry, Worthington, O’Connor, & Wade, 2005) or Trait Narrative Test of Forgivingness (TNTF; Berry, Worthington, Parrott, O’Connor, & Wad…”

“This scale also appears to have adequate psychometric properties (McCullough et al., 1998).”

“feelings of closeness between conflicting parties (McCullough et al., 1998; Overall, Sibley, & Travaglia, 2010).”

“The two studies were quite consistent in their support of these hypotheses, in keeping with other recent findings (Karremans & Van Lange, 2004; McCullough et al., 1998; Tsang et al., 2006).”

“Future research, for example, should examine the impact of relationship closeness as a moderator of the effects presented in this paper (e.g. Fincham, 2000; Karremans & Van Lange, 2004; McCullough et al., 1998).”

“) according to relevant literature, expert interviews, and the TransgressionRelated Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (TRIM).(14) Before this study, both scales were pilot tested among 112 war-affected children in Kosovo and 215 war-affected refugee children in Hamburg, Germany.”

“Furthermore, empirical research has identified situational empathy (e.g., empathy for a specific offender) as a key mediator in the forgiveness process (e.g., McCullough et al., 1997, 1998).”

“Similarly, in the forgiveness literature, researchers have conceptualized ruminative thought as the source of desire for revenge (Mauger et al., 1992; McCullough, Bellah, Kilpatrick, & Johnson, 2001; McCullough et al., 1998).”

“esire for revenge using a measure developed by Grégoire, Tripp, nd Legoux (2009) and adapted from Aquino, Tripp, and Bies 2001) and McCullough et al. (1998).”

“Forgiveness is more likely when offenders take responsibility for their actions (Girard and Mullet, 1997; McCullough et al., 1997, 1998).”

“The Acts of Forgiveness scale (AF; Drinnon and Jones, 1999) and the Transgression-related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (TRIM; McCullough et al., 1998) were employed to measure state forgiveness, directly after the structured interview.”

“…that individuals are more likely to offer forgiveness to their offenders when induced with empathy for the offender rather than when induced with self-enhancement motives (e.g., positive outcomes for the forgiver resulting from forgiveness; McCullough et al., 1997; McCullough et al., 1998).”

“Kelman (2008) has recently distinguished between, on McCullough et al., 1998) and apply them to the intergroup level.”

“Enright (Enright et al., 1989; Enright and the Human Development Study Group, 1991) began the programmatic investigation into the psychological consequences of forgiveness, followed by extensive development of the concept by Worthington and McCullough (McCullough et al., 1998; e.g., McCullough and Worthington, 1995).”

“Perhaps because avoidance goals have an inherent primacy, measurement of forgiveness has focused on this negative dimension (e.g., McCullough et al., 1998) and a great deal of what has been learned about forgiveness rests on inferences made from the absence of a negative motivational orientation…”

“The TRIM has also shown acceptable construct validity supported by confirmatory factor analysis and convergent and divergent correlations with other measures of forgiveness and related constructs ( McCullough et al. 1998 ).”

“Building on this research and work linking excessive rumination to reduced state and dispositional forgiveness (e.g., Barber, Maltby, & Macaskill, 2005; Brown & Phillips, 2005; Burnette et al., 2007; Kachadourian et al., 2005; McCullough et al., 1998; Paleari, Regalia, & Fincham, 2005), we hypothesize that anxiously a…”

“…then rate their degree of forgiveness of the offense using a self-report measure, such as the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations (TRIM; McCullough et al., 1998), the Rye Forgiveness Scale (RFS; Rye et al., 2001), or the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI; Subkoviak, Enright, Wu, &…”

“To capture the interpersonal aspect of forgiveness, we use the term reconciliation, which we define as an effort by the victim to extend acts of goodwill towards the offender in the hope of restoring the relationship ( McCullough et al., 1997, 1998 ).”

“Dispositional vengefulness was assessed with a German version (Werner & Appel, 2004) of the revenge subscale of the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (TRIM; McCullough et al., 1998).”

“The 12-item Transgression Related Interpersonal Motivations (TRIM; McCullough et al., 1998) was used to assess state unforgiving motivations.”

“Participants' motivation to seek revenge against transgressors was measured by the Revenge Motivations Subscale of the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Scale (TRIM; McCullough et al., 1998).”

“Given this, we believed that the use of a more formal and lengthy measure of forgiveness (e.g., the TRIM, McCullough et al., 1998) at the end of the study would have made the participants suspicious about the actual purpose of the study.”

“…during stressful times (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991), tend to show maladaptive and even dangerous responses to interpersonal offenses (e.g., “I’ll make him pay”; McCullough et al., 1998, 2001), and express reduced satisfaction and commitment to their solutions and plans (Ward et al., 2002).”

“Also, a customer, who has suffered from a failure, experiences emotional healing and feels less aggressive when she/he is acknowledged by the organization (Baron 1990; McCullough et al. 1998).”

“Although individuals in communal relationships are typically portrayed as caring and understanding when their partners make mistakes (e.g., Goodwin 1996; McCullough et al. 1998), this observation ignores the fact that individuals in such relationships also expect their partners to be concerned about them.”

“Investigators of the relationship between apology and forgiveness have suggested that apology becomes more effective in bringing about forgiveness when the victims experience empathy by taking the perspective of the transgressors (McCullough et al., 1998; McCullough et al., 1997).”

“This type of scale has proven effective to relate feelings of social distance with connectedness to other ingroup members (Tropp & Wright, 2001), forgiveness (McCullough et al., 1998), other cognitive measures of closeness (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991), etc.”

“Indeed, various conceptualizations of forgiveness (e.g., Fincham & Beach, 2001; McCullough et al., 1997, 1998) suggest forgiveness is a tendency to become more motivated to approach the transgressor and less motivated to avoid the transgressor.”

“Consistent with previous research (Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, & Hannon, 2002; McCullough & Hoyt, 2002; McCullough et al., 1998 ), state forgiveness was associated with reports of preoffense intimacy (r ¼ 0:18, p < 0:01), the severity of the offense (r ¼� 0:19, p < 0:01), and whether the offender had apologized (r ¼ 0…”

“Rye et al. (2001) note there exist as many measures of forgiveness of others as definitions (Berry, Parrott, OConnor, & Wade, 2001; Hargrave & Sells, 1997; McCullough et al., 1998; Subkoviak et al., 1995; Wade, 1990).”

“cur with McCullough et al. (1998) that personality factors are likely more distally related to self–forgiveness than the variables proposed here.”

“…three competing models separately for husbands and wives: (a) a three-factor oblique model comprising Avoidance, Revenge–Resentment, and Benevolence (McCullough et al., 1998; 1997); (b) a two-factor oblique model comprising Unforgiveness (including Avoidance and Revenge–Resentment items) and…”

“The TRIM Inventory consists of 12 items that measure the two negative interpersonal motivations that McCullough et al. posited to underlie forgiveness: (a) Avoidance (“I am trying to keep as much distance between us as possible”); and (b) Revenge (“I want to see him/her hurt and miserable”).”

“Research on interpersonal relationships suggests that individuals are more likely to forgive a transgressor if the transgressor is apologetic (McCullough et al., 1998; Struthers, Eaton, Santelli, Uchiyama, & Shirvani, 2008) rather than if it offers a lipservice, insincere, or self-protective…”

“In addition, consistent with prior research (McCullough et al., 1998; Fincham, 2000; Fincham & Beach, 2001; Fincham et al., 2002), we found that those with a greater tendency to forgive partner transgressions were also more satisfied in their relationships.”

“McCullough and colleagues (McCullough et al., 1998, 2003) have proposed that forgiveness can be conceptualized as a suite of prosocial motivational changes whereby a victim of a transgression becomes less vengeful, less avoidant, and more benevolent toward a former transgressor.”

“The original TRIM has also demonstrated a variety of desirable psychometric properties, including adequate internal consistency, moderate temporal stability, as well as acceptable discriminant and convergent validity (McCullough et al., 1998).”