Forgive and forget: Differences between decisional and emotional forgiveness

Lichtenfeld, S.; Buechner, V.L.; Maier, M.A.; Fernández-Capo, M.

Abstract

To forgive and forget is a well-known idiom, which has rarely been looked at empirically. In the current experiment, we investigated differences between emotional and decisional forgiveness on forgetting. The present study provides the first empirical support that emotional forgiveness has a strong influence on subsequent incidental forgetting. Specifically, our results demonstrate that emotional forgiveness leads to substantially higher levels of forgetting in respect to offense relevant traits compared to both decisional forgiveness and no forgiveness. This provides evidence for our hypothesized effect that only individuals who have emotionally forgiven a transgression, and not those who just decided to forgive, subsequently forget offense relevant traits attributed to the transgressor.

Citation

Lichtenfeld, S., Buechner, V., Maier, M., & Fernández-Capo, M. (2015). Forgive and forget: Differences between decisional and emotional forgiveness. PLoS ONE, 10(5), Article e0125561. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125561

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 25, 2015
• Online Publication Date: May 6, 2015
• Publication Date: May 6, 2015
• Deposit Date: Nov 7, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 7, 2017
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Electronic ISSN: 1932-6203
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 5
• Article Number: e0125561
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125561
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1371717