Abstract
Forgiveness contributes to positive social relationships, which is critical for individual development, particularly for early adolescents. Most previous studies focused on the unique roles of cognitive factors (e.g., compromising thinking) and personality traits (e.g., self-esteem) in the process of developing forgiveness. However, sporadic research has examined their interactive effect on forgiveness from an integrated perspective. Given that forgiveness has been categorized into decisional and emotional forgiveness, this study aimed to examine the effects of compromising thinking on two types of forgiveness, and the moderating effects of self-esteem on the association between compromising thinking and forgiveness among early adolescents. A total of 1,009 Chinese primary and secondary school students (50.4% males; M age = 11.75, SD = 1.27) were recruited to complete three self-reported questionnaires. The results showed that compromising thinking predicted decisional forgiveness but not emotional forgiveness. Furthermore, self-esteem was identified to moderate the conditional effects of compromising thinking on decisional and emotional forgiveness. These findings advance a better understanding of the construct and mechanism of forgiveness, which can provide insights for targeted forgiveness interventions among early adolescents, such as compromising thinking instructions and self-esteem enhancement programs.
Highlights
Adolescence is a developmental period in which social relationships become increasingly important and complex (Parker et al, 2006), and interpersonal problems become frequent and intense (Karimova, 2015; Ma et al, 2019)
This study aimed to examine the direct effect of compromising thinking and the moderating effect of self-esteem on decisional and emotional forgiveness among early adolescents
On the basis of the above findings, we proposed the following hypotheses: H2a: Self-esteem moderates the effect of compromising thinking on decisional forgiveness
Summary
Adolescence is a developmental period in which social relationships become increasingly important and complex (Parker et al, 2006), and interpersonal problems become frequent and intense (Karimova, 2015; Ma et al, 2019). Forgiveness is known as a complex process that involves reducing negative motivation and increasing positive motivation after experiencing a transgression (Worthington, 2005) It can be categorized as decisional forgiveness and emotional forgiveness. The former refers to the behavioral intention to resist an unforgiving stance and to respond differently toward a transgressor; the latter refers to reduction of unforgiving-related negative emotions and replacement with positive prosocial emotions. These two processes have an essential distinction and interactively explain the process of forgiveness (Worthington et al, 2007b). This study focused on decisional and emotional forgiveness, instead of considering forgiveness as an integrated entity
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