The Investigation of University Students' Forgiveness Levels in Terms of Self-compassion, Rumination and Personality Traits

Coskun Arslan,Tuncay Oral

doi:10.13189/ujer.2017.050902

Abstract

The aim of the study is to investigate forgiveness levels of university students in terms of self-compassion, rumination and personality traits. A descriptive-correlational was used and self-administered questionnaires were conducted in this study. Participants of the study were 840 university students (460 females, 380 males) from different faculties of Pamukkale University chosen by random cluster sampling method. In this study, forgiveness was measured with Heartland Forgiveness Scale; self-compassion was measured with Self-compassion Scale; rumination was measured with Rumination about an Interpersonal Offense Scale, and personality traits were measured with Adjective Based Personality Scale. To examine the predictive power of self-compassion, rumination and personality traits on forgiveness, hierarchical regression analysis was used. According to the results of the study, among university students, self-compassion and extraversion are both significant predictors of self-forgiveness. And also, both of them predict self-forgiveness positively. However, rumination, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness of personality traits do not predict self-forgiveness. Also according to results, among university students, self-compassion, rumination and extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness are significant predictors of forgiveness of others. While self-compassion, extraversion and agreeableness predict forgiveness of others positively, rumination and conscientiousness predict negatively. Implications of these findings are discussed within the context of literature.

Highlights

It is quite natural that a human being defined as a social creature experiences troubles and conflicts in her/his relations with others
In terms of the researches which these models were tested in, if we look at those similarities generally, we can see that forgiveness has a negative relationship with some concepts such as pain, feeling of anger, aggression, rumination and perfectionism, but on the other side, it has a positive relationship with other concepts such as psychological health, reconciliation with offender, emphatic conception and giving up negative feelings [17, 35, 39, 72]
It is tested whether variables of self-compassion, rumination and personality traits predict self-forgiveness, and forgiveness of others (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

It is quite natural that a human being defined as a social creature experiences troubles and conflicts in her/his relations with others. The studies on what will be the positive reactions in case of a same situation are very limited [7]. Until the beginning of twentieth century, researchers studying psychology had investigated negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, but did not pay adequate attention to studies related to positive emotions [45]. From the mid-1980s, the studies investigating how individuals can get benefit of their positive qualifications have risen with the momentum of the positive psychology. Forgiveness, which is accepted as a concept that can lead to positive emotions in “to hurt-to be hurt” cases in interpersonal relationships, has begun to be examined in this context in the recent 30 years [17, 64]

Objectives

Results

Conclusion