Abstract
Love forgiveness is categorized as forgiveness in a specific relationship, which is the tendency of individuals to forgive the objects of their interpersonal relationships. We investigated 831 undergraduate students in China with a love forgiveness questionnaire, a subjective well-being questionnaire and an interpersonal relationship comprehensive diagnostic, including demographic variables. Students of different genders and grades showed significant differences across the three questionnaires. There were significant correlations between love forgiveness, interpersonal relationships, and subjective well-being of Chinese college students. Interpersonal relationships played an intermediary role between love forgiveness and subjective well-being of Chinese college students. Specifically, whereas Chinese college students’ love forgiveness could directly promote the improvement of subjective well-being, love forgiveness could also indirectly improve subjective well-being through interpersonal relationships. The mediating effect of interpersonal relationships between love forgiveness and subjective well-being accounted for 40.52% of the total effect. This provides a new way of thinking for psychological counselors to approach the intimate relationship problems of college students.
Highlights
Forgiveness has attracted attention from scholars in recent years as a new research subject of positive psychology
We focus on the following research questions that have not been explored: Research Question 1: What is the relationship between love forgiveness, interpersonal relationships, and subjective well-being of Chinese college students? Research Question 2: Are interpersonal relationships an intermediary between love forgiveness and subjective wellbeing of Chinese college students? Research Question 3: Is there any difference in love forgiveness, interpersonal relationships, and subjective well-being among Chinese college students? Are male or female college students more likely to forgive? Research Question 4: Does grade level have an effect on these three variables? Research Question 5: Does place of origin have an effect on these three variables?
We investigated the demographic variables of college students’ love forgiveness, subjective well-being, and interpersonal relationships, and discussed the relationship between these three variables
Summary
Forgiveness has attracted attention from scholars in recent years as a new research subject of positive psychology. Forgiveness can be defined as a reduction in avoidance and revenge motivation accompanied by a change in prosocial motivation from an individual toward an offender following an interpersonal conflict (McCullough et al, 2006). Forgiveness is divided into trait forgiveness, forgiveness in a specific relationship, and forgiveness in a situation (Zhang and Fu, 2014). Forgiveness in love and in marriage is categorized as forgiveness in a specific relationship, which is the tendency of individuals to forgive the objects of their specific interpersonal relationships (Paleari et al, 2009; Zhang and Fu, 2014). Research on the forgiveness of specific relationships in Western countries mainly focuses on marital relationships and rarely involves non-marital romantic relationships. In China, there are only a few studies on forgiveness in marital relationships
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