Does religious commitment facilitate forgiveness? a study on Indian young adults

Abstract

Religious practices are evoked from a strong sense of faith in God, which extends beyond praying. Commitment to one’s religion exerts significant influence on one’s everyday behaviour. Keeping this in mind, it is beneficial to study its influence on certain other aspects of life such as forgiveness. Religious commitment and forgiveness are the variables studied in the present study. A sample of 200 young adults (100 males and 100 females) was chosen for the study. The Religious Commitment Inventory (Worthington et al., 2003) and The Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations (McCullough et al., 1998) were used to assess religious commitment and forgiveness. The analysis of results revealed that individuals with high religious commitment are more forgiving than those with low religious commitment. In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between religious commitment and forgiveness and women were found to be more forgiving than men.