Forgiveness and Social LonelinessLiza Day,  John Maltby. The Journal of Psychology. Provincetown: Nov 2005. Vol.139, Iss. 6;  pg. 553, 3 pgs

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Subjects: Forgiveness,  Emotions,  Psychology,  Personal relationships

Author(s): Liza Day,  John Maltby

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Section: Replications and Refinements

Publication title: The Journal of Psychology. Provincetown: Nov 2005. Vol. 139, Iss. 6;  pg. 553, 3 pgs

Source type: Periodical

ISSN: 00223980

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Abstract (Document Summary)

Day and Maltby administer the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale to 176 undergraduates from two United Kingdom universities to test the possible relationship between the three dimensions of dispositional forgiveness--forgiveness of others, forgiveness of oneself, and forgiveness of situations--and social loneliness. The results suggest that forgiveness of oneself, and not forgiveness of others or situations, accounts for the unique variance of social loneliness scores.

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Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Nov 2005

IN STUDIES ON FORGIVENESS, recent authors have suggested that positive psychology presents an adequate theoretical context within which to examine that concept (Snyder & McCullough, 2000; Yamhure-Thompson & Snyder, 2002). Positive psychology tends to emphasize increased well-being and adjustment resulting from resolving interpersonal situations through intrapersonal reflection and positive interpersonal relationships (Lopez, Snyder, & Rasmussen, 2002). Similarly, forgiveness is seen as a process in which there is a continual engagement through intrapersonal reflection and developing and maintaining social relationships within the context of interpersonal transgression (Yamhure-Thompson & Snyder). This type of approach suggests that forgiveness of another person's transgression is related to a person's social relationships, and that people who tend to forgive others seek to forge stronger social relationships and would tend not to be lonely.

Typically, these predictions are made around forgiveness of others, and for the most part, research into forgiveness centers on the role of forgiveness of others. However, within the forgiveness literature, there is a three-dimensional model of dispositional forgiveness (Yamhure-Thompson & Snyder, 2002) which, aside from forgiveness of others, identifies forgiveness of oneself (forgiveness regarding one's own previous transgression against others) and forgiveness of situations (a tendency

to accept and seek closure around a negative life event beyond one's control, such as an earthquake or illness).

There is reason to believe that failure to forgive oneself and situations might be related to social loneliness. Failure to forgive one's own transgression or to be able to cope effectively with a negative life event may lead to concentration on oneself or the negative event and thus lead to a withdrawal from social relationships. There has been no previous research examining the relationship between these aspects of forgiveness and social loneliness. To test the possible relationship between the three dimensions of dispositional forgiveness and social loneliness, we administered the Heartland Forgiveness Scale (Yamhure-Thompson & Snyder, 2002) and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980) to 176 undergraduate students (69 men and 106 women) aged between 18 and 46 years (M = 20.48 years, SD = 5.5) from two United Kingdom universities. The Heartland Forgiveness Scale is an 18-item measure of the three dimensions of forgiveness: (a) forgiveness of self; (b) forgiveness of others; and (c) forgiveness of situations. The Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale is a 10-item measure of loneliness, best conceptualized as a measure of social loneliness (Cramer & Barry, 1999).

Alpha coefficients computed for all the scales were above the .7 criteria suggested for satisfactory reliability. We found no significant differences between men and women for any of the variables. After the examination of a scattergram ruled out evidence of nonlinear relationships among the variables, we computed Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients between all the variables. The three dimensions of forgiveness were all significantly and positively correlated with each other (r > .44, p < .01). Forgiveness of oneself (r = -.41, p < .01) and forgiveness of situations (r = -.26, p < .01) shared a statistically significantly negative correlation with social loneliness. However, no significant relationship was found between forgiveness of others and loneliness (r = -.06, p > .05). Because of the significant correlations between forgiveness of oneself and situations, we performed a multiple regression analysis, using these two measures of forgiveness as predictor variables and social loneliness scores as the dependent variable. For this analysis, the regression statistic (r) was significantly different from zero, F(2, 172) = 17.79, p < .01; r = .41, r^sup 2^ = .17, adjusted r^sup 2^ = .16. Forgiveness of self (B = -.42, β = -.46, sr^sup 2^ = .21, t = -4.60, p < .01 ) but not forgiveness of situations (B = .05, β = .07, t = .67, p > .05) accounted for unique variance in scores on social loneliness.

The results suggest that forgiveness of oneself, and not forgiveness of others or situations, accounts for the unique variance in social loneliness scores. This finding is perhaps surprising, given the emphasis that forgiveness of others has on repairing social relationships. In interpreting this finding, it is important to note that there are two interpretations based on the correlation. First, if forgiveness is treated as the causal variable, this finding suggests that people unable to forgive themselves tend to withdraw from social relationships, feeling they are unworthy of forgiveness. second, if social loneliness is treated as the causal variable, people who are lonely might feel that they have fewer social relationships and assign more importance to their own transgressions because they are unable to forgive themselves.

However, the finding that forgiveness of others was not significantly correlated with social loneliness suggests no evidence for the prediction derived from positive psychology that people who forgive others will tend to be less socially lonely. Consequently, the sentiment of positive psychology that forgiveness of others might reflect positive relationships with others is not supported. Nevertheless, the findings suggest the need for further examination of the relationship between forgiveness of oneself and social loneliness within the context of withdrawal and the perceived seriousness of one's own transgressions.

[Reference]REFERENCES

Cramer, K. M., & Barry, J. E. (1999). Conceptualizations and measures of loneliness: A comparison of subscales. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 491-502.Lopez, S. J., Snyder, C. R., & Rasmussen, H. N. (2002). Striking a vital balance: Developing a complementary focus on human weakness and strength through positive psychological assessment. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Positive psychological assessment: A handbook of models and measures (pp. 3-20). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Russell, D., Peplau, L. A., & Cutrona, C. E. (1980). The revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and discriminant validity evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 472-480.Snyder, C. R., & McCullough, M. E. (2000). A positive psychology field of dreams: If you build it they will come . . . Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 151-160.Yamhure-Thompson, L., & Snyder, C. R. (2002). Measuring forgiveness. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Positive psychological assessment: A handbook of models and measures (pp. 301-312). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Original manuscript received June 17, 2004Final revisiion accepted January 3, 2005

[Author Affiliation]LIZA DAYPsychology Subject GroupSheffield Hallam University, UKJOHN MALTBYSchool of PsychologyUniversity of Leicester, UK

[Author Affiliation]Address correspondence to Liza Day, Psychology Subject Group, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S10 2BP, United Kingdom; l.day@shu.ac.uk (e-mail).

THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF FORGIVENESS: POSITIVE CONSTRUALS OF THE FORGIVENESS EXPERIENCEIan Williamson,  Marti Hope Gonzales. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. New York: Apr 2007. Vol.26, Iss. 4;  pg. 407, 40 pgs

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Subjects: Motivation,  Forgiveness,  Psychology,  Behavior,  Research & development--R&D

Author(s): Ian Williamson,  Marti Hope Gonzales

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Publication title: Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. New York: Apr 2007. Vol. 26, Iss. 4;  pg. 407, 40 pgs

Source type: Periodical

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Three studies examined the subjective experience of forgiveness. Studies 1 and 2 revealed the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of transgressions, and revealed that the forgiveness experience comprises relief from psychological pain, increased empathy and positive regard for offenders, the actualization of religious values, the discovery of new meaning, and movement toward reconciliation with offenders. Study 3, an experiment, revealed that those who have forgiven experience more of these benefits of forgiveness than those who have yet to forgive or than those who reflect on their experiences prior to forgiveness. Study 3 also demonstrated the differential impact of offense severity, victim-offender closeness, and victim religiosity on the five underlying dimensions of the forgiveness experience. Implications of the forgiveness experience for counseling and therapy are also discussed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Copyright Guilford Publications, Inc. Apr 2007 [Headnote]Three studies examined the subjective experience of forgiveness. Studies 1 and 2 revealed the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of transgressions, and revealed that the forgiveness experience comprises relief from psychological pain, increased empathy and positive regard for offenders, the actualization of religious values, the discovery of new meaning, and movement toward reconciliation with offenders. Study 3, an experiment, revealed that those who have forgiven experience more of these benefits of forgiveness than those who have yet to forgive or than those who reflect on their experiences prior to forgiveness. Study 3 also demonstrated the differential impact of offense severity, victim-offender closeness, and victim religiosity on the five underlying dimensions of the forgiveness experience. Implications of the forgiveness experience for counseling and therapy are also discussed.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

-Mark Twain

Forgiveness, a complex process, often extends over a considerable time, and includes wide-ranging and substantial intrapsychic and interpersonal changes in the people who experience it (e.g., Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000; Kearns & Fincham, 2004; Wade & Worthington, 2005; Younger, Piferi, Jobe, & Lawler, 2004). Transgressions such as infidelity, physical violence, or social rejection often leave anguished victims ruminating on the offenses and their offenders. To reverse the natural inclination to avoid or retaliate often takes considerable personal effort, and not surprisingly, victims experience this process in myriad ways. The purpose of our research was threefold: to catalogue thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of victims of serious interpersonal offenses; to identify the kinds of offenses that evoke issues of forgiveness; and to examine the multidimensional nature of the forgiveness experience.1

CONCEPTUALIZING FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness has been defined in relatively parsimonious ways by some researchers, and in more elaborate ways by others. McCullough, Worthington, and Rachal (1997) initially conceived forgiveness as a set of motivational changes in which victims become less motivated to retaliate and to maintain estrangement, and more motivated to demonstrate goodwill toward harm doers. McCullough et al. (1998) further simplified this definition, describing forgiveness as "the reduction in avoidance motivation and revenge motivation following an interpersonal offense" (p. 1587). This elegantly simple conceptualization of forgiveness has been validated in a series of studies (e.g., McCullough et al., 1998), and continues to be a prominent working definition (McCullough & Hoyt,

2002; Hoyt, Fincham, McCullough, Maio, & Davila, 2005).

In a more elaborate conceptualization of forgiveness, Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000, p. 29) define the concept as "willfully abandoning resentment and related responses (to which victims have a right), and endeavoring to respond to the wrongdoer based on the moral principle of beneficence, which may include compassion, unconditional worth, generosity, and moral love (to which the wrongdoer, by nature of the hurtful act or acts, has no right)." This definition is more complex than that of McCullough and his colleagues (1997, 1998), including notions of morality in addition to motivation. Other relatively complex conceptualizations seem to stress the interpersonal implications in the overture of forgiveness (Baumeister, Exline, & Sommer, 1998; Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, & Hannon, 2002; Harerave & Sells, 1997).

Theorists have also invoked religious perspectives in their approach to forgiveness (e.g., Dorff, 1998; Meek & McMinn, 1997; Rye et al., 2000; Sandage, 2005). Rye et al. (2000, p. 17) assert that "in theistic religions, forgiveness is a means for imitating God, carrying out God's plan, or enhancing one's relationship with the divine." Forgiveness, however, means different things in different religions. For example, in Jewish tradition, forgiveness is inherently an interpersonal phenomenon; transgressors are expected to enact an elaborate ritual of apology before victims grant forgiveness (Dorff, 1998). In Christian tradition, forgiveness does not as much occur between victims and transgressors, as it does within the minds and hearts of the victims themselves (Meek & McMinn, 1997); indeed, among Jesus's last acts was to intercede on behalf of those who murdered him: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do" [Luke 23:34]. Islamic teachings endorse retaliation commensurate with harm done, but forgiveness is preferred (Rye et al., 2000). In addition, although forgiveness figures less explicitly in Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, forgiveness-related concepts such as compassion and mercy figure prominently (Enright, Eastin, Golden, Sarinopoulos, & Freedman, 1992; Rye et al., 2000).

Thus, psychologists, philosophers, and theologians have all contributed both to conceptualizations of forgiveness and to descriptions of the experiential concomitants thereof. For many researchers, simple definitions are designed to elicit self-reports of whether forgiveness has occurred in response to interventions. However, other theorists and practitioners allude to a rich array of experiential concomitants that are more varied and complex than empirical definitions would suggest. Even McCullough and colleagues (1997, 1998), whose definition of forgiveness addresses only avoidance or revenge motivations, note that forgiveness is not synonymous with those motivations, but is instead the lay term that people use to describe "the transformation [italics ours] that occurs" when victims' motivations to maintain estrangement or to exact revenge decrease (McCullough et al., 1997, p. 322). With that in mind, our goal in the studies lies in documenting the wealth of experiences that concur with the attainment of forgiveness. In other words, our interest is in gaining a scientific understanding of the subjective experience of forgiveness.

THE PROCESS OF FORGIVENESS

On the one hand, we sought to capture a greater array of experiential processes than attitudinal or motivational changes toward the offender; on the other hand, we wanted to reduce this multifaceted experience into a few meaningful dimensions. We expected that the most common experiential changes associated with forgiveness would reflect three overarching dimensions: positive changes in victims' interpersonal orientations toward offenders, beneficial changes in victims' psychological well-being, and finally, the opportunity for victims to actualize the religious values espoused in the New Testament.

INTERPERSONAL CONCOMITANTS

Forgiveness is characterized by changes in victims' interpersonal orientations toward their offenders. For example, McCullough and colleagues (1998) found changes in interpersonal revenge and avoidance motivations associated with offender apology, decreased rumination, and increasing

empathy for the offender. Coyle and Enright (1997) found positive changes in victims' interpersonal affect, cognition, and behavior toward their offenders after victims' participation in an intervention to facilitate forgiveness. Using other measures of interpersonal orientation, researchers have found that forgiveness interventions result in positive changes (Al-Mabuk, Engright, & Cardis, 1995; Freedman & Enright, 1996; Hebl & Enright, 1993; McCullough & Worthington, 1995; McCullough et al., 1997).

INTRAPERSONAL CONCOMITANTS

Theorists in both existential and Christian psychology point to the transformative nature of forgiveness (e.g., Fow, 1996; Frankl, 1984; Gassin & Enright, 1995; Layton, 1999). Frankl (1984) argued that a number of human drives or motivations can be subsumed under the overarching struggle to find meaning or purpose in life, including adverse situations over which we have little or no control. Finding meaning in suffering can be positively self-transformative; feelings of despair or pain diminish, as do perceptions of the world as unjust or incomprehensible, enabling those who find meaning in forgiveness to "rise above it and grow beyond themselves" (Frankl, 1984, p. 70). Similarly, Layton (1999), in discussing the path from the "stunned innocence" following injury to the experience of forgiveness, writes of the expansion of meaning that forgiveness affords the forgiver.

Both scholarly and popular literature suggest that forgiveness reduces negative emotions (Enright, Eastin et al., 1992; Fitzgibbons, 1986; Hope, 1987; Luskin, 2002), restores well-being (Al-Mabuk et al., 1995; Freedman & Enright, 1996; Hebl & Enright, 1993; Karremans, Van Lange, Ouwerkerk, & Kluwer, 2003), and improves mental health and physical functioning (McCullough & Worthington, 1994; Witvliet, 2001; Worthington & Scherer, 2004). Luskin (2002) writes, for example, that as you forgive "you may experience an increase in positive emotions . . . have easier access to hope, care, affection, trust, and happiness . . . experience less anger . . . see a reduction in depression and hopelessness" (p. 78), and Al-Mabuk and his colleagues (1995) found that a forgiveness intervention for love-deprived adolescents helped to decrease depression and anxiety among the participants.

RELIGIOUS-EXPRESSIVE CONCOMITANTS

Forgiveness also enables victims to behave in a manner supported by religious traditions to which victims adhere (Dorff, 1998; Marty, 1998; McCullough & Worthington, 1999; Meek & McMinn, 1997; Pargament & Rye, 1998; Patton, 2000; Rye et al., 2000; Sandage, 1999). Rye and his colleagues (2000) describe the varying ways in which forgiveness is explicitly or tacitly supported by all of the major world religions. Further, they summarize potential forgiveness-related experiences of religious individuals that may not be experienced by secular victims. First, forgiveness is sanctified and imbued with divine qualities, and thus, forgiving brings the religious closer to God. Forgiveness is also a means of imitating God. Among Christian religions, with which most religious Americans affiliate, Jesus provides a model for forgiveness, and faithful Christians are encouraged to respond to their offenders in a manner consistent with Jesus's teachings and behaviors.

DISTRESS, COUNSELING, AND FORGIVENESS

Although it is difficult to determine the extent to which struggles in attaining forgiveness motivate clients to seek counseling or therapy, a number of studies documenting the nature of "presenting problems" have revealed that most presenting problems involve intrapsychic distress or interpersonal concerns (Cook et al., 1984; Kunkel & Newsom, 1996; Robbins, May, & Corazzini, 1985; Tinsley, de St. Aubin, & Brown, 1982). Indeed, among college and university students, demand for such "traditional" services as choosing a major and career planning has declined, even as demand for services that address personal concerns (e.g., anxiety, interpersonal concerns and conflicts, low self-esteem) has increased (Robbins et al., 1985; Tinsley, et al., 1982). Research on the presenting problems of community samples has revealed that client concerns are similar to the personal problems for which increasing numbers of college and university students are seeking professional counseling, and include interpersonal problems such as family and marital problems, abuse, and romantic and sexual relationship problems that are associated with anxiety and depression (Garwick

& Lampman, 1972; Hutchinson, Lee, & Hutchinson, 1987).

Whether forgiveness per se is the goal of counseling or psychotherapy, it is likely that the kinds of positive intrapsychic and interpersonal changes that accompany clients' subjective experiences are indeed "therapeutic," as clients become less anxious, depressed, and bitter; as they find new meaning and transcend feelings of anger, hopelessness, and desires for revenge; as they replace hostile or negative attributions about their offenders with more benign or compassionate attributions; and as they contemplate or actualize the arduous process of reconciliation with those whom they once valued and trusted.

GOALS FOR THE CURRENT RESEARCH

Our primary goal in the current research was to capture a coherent array of experiential concomitants of forgiveness, as described by victims who have struggled to forgive their offenders. In addition, we sought to describe as comprehensively as possible the kinds of offenses that make the prospect of forgiveness salient for those who experience harmdoing. In Studies 1 and 2, we examined retrospective self-reports of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors generated by serious interpersonal offenses that make forgiveness an issue for victims of those offenses. In Study 3, we examine descriptions of the offense itself, as well as victims' reports of which offender behaviors made it easier or more difficult for them to forgive their offenders.

STUDY 1

PURPOSE AND OVERVIEW

The main purpose of this study was to determine the underlying factor structure that captures, as comprehensively as possible, participants' experiences of the psychological concomitants of forgiveness. Toward this end, we drew from the current literature describing the benefits of forgiveness to generate a questionnaire about the experience of forgiveness, and administered the questionnaire to a large sample. second, we collected free response data on participants' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors immediately after a harmful transgression in order to describe the nature of harmful consequences that participant victims reported, and to determine whether those post-transgression experiences were those assumed to be "undone" or "remedied" by the forgiveness process.

ITEM SELECTION

To generate questionnaire items, we surveyed broadly and without a priori biases, all scholarly materials (i.e., psychological, philosophical, and theological) in an effort to identify as many aspects or dimensions of the forgiveness experience as possible, all in the interest of generating an exhaustive sample of potential participant self-reports of their own personal experiences with forgiveness. Our fairly comprehensive and diverse sample included both theoretical and empirical articles from researchers and writers in developmental, social, counseling, and clinical psychology; in social work; and in the psychology of religion.

After a thorough and comprehensive examination of this literature, we devised a large questionnaire to canvass a full array of possible psychological experiences associated with the forgiveness process. We then led several hour-long focus group sessions to determine whether the questionnaire was clear and comprehensive. Based on focus group participants' feedback, changes were made to the questionnaire to improve clarity, and additional items were added, resulting in the 55-item Forgiveness Experience Scale.

These item generation efforts were truly "inductive" in that we generated items by selecting as many nonredundant definitions and descriptions of the forgiveness experience (i.e., affective, cognitive,

spiritual, religious, and behavioral changes associated with the process of forgiving a painful transgression) included in the literature in psychology, philosophy, and theology, erring on the side of overinclusion.

We hypothesized that the concomitants of the forgiveness experience would be subsumed by three dimensions: personal concomitants, interpersonal concomitants, and religious-expressive concomitants. We included between 16 and 20 items that reflected each of these dimensions. Two examples of personal benefits are an increase in happiness and the ability to move on with life. Two examples of interpersonal benefits include showing goodwill to the other and the facilitation of reconciliation. Two examples of religious-expressive benefits are bringing victims closer to God and allowing victims to use an opportunity to model the behavior of Jesus (e.g., Enright, Santos, & Al-Mabuk, 1989; Hope, 1987; McCullough & Worthington, 1994).

METHOD

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 581 participants (201 men, 362 women, 18 who did not specify gender) participated in this questionnaire study in exchange for extra credit in psychology courses at a large Midwestern university. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 39 years, with a median age of 19 years. Participants described themselves as Caucasian (76.2%), African American (4.8%), Asian or Asian American (10.8%), Hispanic (1.5%), Native American (0.9%), or "other" (2.2%), and 3.4% did not indicate race or ethnicity. The largest number of respondents described themselves as Catholic (28.9%), with Protestants (25.8%) representing the second largest religious group. Other participants described themselves as Evangelical (6.4%), Christian (5.5%), Buddhist (2.2%), Muslim (1.7%), Jewish (1.4%), and Mormon (0.9%). A number of participants (15.8%) indicated that they were not affiliated with any organized religion, 6.9% described their religious affiliation as "other," and 3.8% did not indicate their religious affiliation. Thus, fully two-thirds of participants in this sample described themselves as Christian, with nonChristian affiliations (e.g., Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim) relatively uncommon. In fact, more participants indicated that they had no religious affiliation (15.8%) than indicated affiliation with a nonChristian religion (6.0%).

PROCEDURE

In groups of four to 25, participants completed the "Forgiving Questionnnaire." Participants were first instructed, "Please think carefully about a time in your life when someone did something that was hard for you to forgive" and then to "describe as clearly as you can what you were feeling and thinking, and how your behavior toward that person changed after the incident." Participants then described the emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that they experienced immediately after a forgiveness-related offense. This initial task was designed to enable participants to reconstruct as vividly as possible their experiences following a painful incident that made the question of forgiving salient for them.

After providing free-response descriptions of their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors associated with the incidents they recalled, participants used 10-point scales to rate how close they were to their offenders before the incidents (0 = not at all close; 9 = extremely close), and to rate the seriousness of the offense (0 = not at all serious; 9 = extremely serious). Participants reported whether they had indeed forgiven their offenders ("yes," "no"), and those who did forgive indicated how difficult it was for them to forgive (0 = not at all hard; 9 = extremely hard).

Participants were then asked to think about forgiveness and what happens when they forgive someone who has hurt or betrayed them, and they used 7-point scales (0 = never happens when I forgive; 6 = always happens when I forgive) to indicate the extent to which they experienced each benefit during forgiveness.

After providing demographic information about gender, race, or ethnicity, and religious affiliation, participants used a 10-point scale to report on the importance of religion in their everyday lives (0 = not at all important; 9 = extremely important).

Finally, because participants had reported on past painful experiences, we sought to minimize or eliminate any suppression of mood by asking them to report on their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors the last time someone had done them an unexpected kindness. Participants were then debriefed and provided with information on how to contact university counseling services should they desire to talk with someone about the painful experience they had described.

RESULTS

In the results that follow, we first summarize the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of transgressions that make the issue of forgiveness salient to participants. We then report results from both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses designed to capture the dimensions underlying the complex experience of forgiveness.

POST-TRANSGRESSION THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, AND BEHAVIORS

Using questionnaire responses from 100 participants, two research assistants independently examined open-ended data on self-reported post-incident feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and generated preliminary categories for coding responses. Following small-group discussion, these categories were revised to yield the coding categories that appear in Table 1. Carefully trained pairs of research assistants then independently coded all affective, cognitive, and behavioral self-reports. Intercoder agreement was high, based on the calculation of concordance estimates.2 Disagreements between individual coders were resolved via group consensus.

As reflected in Table 1, participants reported a wide range of negative affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of offenses. Participants reported feelings of anger, betrayal, confusion, distress, frustration, depression, and loneliness following a painful transgression against them. "Why" questions were common; many participants, in describing their thoughts, spontaneously asked themselves why offenders would treat them so badly, and why such transgressions befell them personally (i.e., "Why did this happen to me?"). Relatively fewer participants reported thoughts of revenge or retaliation, speculations about their own culpability in the incidents they recalled, thoughts about terminating their relationships with transgressors, thoughts of mistrust or apprehension about the future, or desires to harm their offenders in return. What is striking is that although some participants reported both thoughts of revenge and a desire to harm their offenders, less than 3% of all participants reported engaging in acts of retribution. Instead, participants were more likely to temporarily or permanently end their relationships with offenders, or to engage in such passive reactions as avoiding offenders, or behaving coolly when in their presence. Although only 7.9% spontaneously reported forgiving in the immediate aftermath of the offense, when asked directly whether they had eventually forgiven their offenders, fully 77% of participants responded in the affirmative.

Finally, as revealed in Table 1, although tests of the difference between proportions revealed gender differences on some self-reported affective, cognitive, and behavioral experiences, the reports of men and women were remarkably similar.

FACTOR ANALYSIS OVERVIEW

To assess the validity of our multidimensional conceptualization of forgiveness, we conducted an empirical refinement of our 55-item forgiveness questionnaire using a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques. Pedhazur and Schmelkin (1991) suggest that these techniques in combination can be useful for finding the best fit for a model underlying data. First, an exploratory factor analysis was used to outline the basic factor structure without forcing a solution to

a particular number of factors. We expected that three factors would characterize the experience of forgiveness: benefits to the self, benefits to the relationship with the offender, and religious-expressive benefits. We used the results of the exploratory factor analysis to identify the best factor structure and to modify the scale. We then balanced the number of items on each factor, and rid the scale of redundant items or complex items that loaded on multiple factors. After we modified the scale we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis on the trimmed scale.

Exploratory Factor Analysis. Because we expected the dimensions underlying the experience of forgiveness to be correlated with one another, we used an oblique rotation. In addition, principal axis factoring was used to extract common variance (Pedhazur & Schmelkin, 1991). The rotation converged in 95 iterations, yielding five meaningful factors accounting for 57.96% of the total variance in participants' self-reports.

Individual items with structure matrix factor loadings of .40 or greater were retained. The first factor (eigenvalue = 18.1), for which ten items met or exceeded our criterion, reflected concern, sympathy, and empathy for the offender (e.g., "allows me to sympathize with the other person," "lets me see the good side of the other person, despite his or her offense"). The second factor (eigenvalue = 8.1), composed of 15 items, reflected religious-expressive experiences associated with forgiveness (e.g., "allows me to express God's love," "enables me to act as Jesus would want me to act"). The third factor (eigenvalue = 2.6) consisted of 12 items that captured the self-transformational benefits of forgiveness (e.g., "transforms me into a different and better person," "enables me to adopt a larger perspective, to see the Tjig picture'"). The fourth factor (eigenvalue = 2.0) encompassed 13 items that reflected the positive affective experience afforded by forgiveness, including relief from sadness, healing, and feeling happier (e.g., "helps me to feel happier in general," "relieves the sadness I feel"). The fifth and final factor (eigenvalue = 1.2), revealed via exploratory factor analysis, consisted of four items that captured the thoughts and behaviors that afford reconciliation with the offender, including attempts to show goodwill toward the offender or the reduction or elimination of avoidance behaviors (e.g., "allows me to give the other person 'another chance,'" "means that I no longer have to avoid the other person").

We expected that participants' responses to questionnaire items would generate three meaningful factors that underlie the experience of forgiveness (i.e., personal psychological benefits to victims, improvement of relations with offenders, and religious-expressive benefits). Although results of the exploratory factor analysis did reveal personal benefits to victims, participants seemed to differentiate between relief from pain and suffering on the one hand, and self-transformation, on the other hand. Further, in reporting on their experience of forgiveness, participants distinguished between offender-related cognitions (e.g., increases in positive evaluations or regard for offenders) and offender-related behaviors (e.g., behaviors facilitating reconciliation).

Thus, the results of the exploratory factor analysis suggest that the positive phenomenal experience of forgiveness is multidimensional. Victims associate the experience of forgiveness with affective benefits such as relief from anger or pain, with self-transformation that results from the discovery of a "larger meaning," with more positive regard for offenders, with behaviors that facilitate reconciliation with offenders, and with religious-expressive benefits associated with Christian values.

Scale Revision and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Based on results of the exploratory factor analysis, we trimmed the original scale from 55 to 24 items, omitting both items that failed to load sufficiently on individual underlying factors, and complex items that loaded on multiple factors. In constructing the shorter 24-item scale, we also sought to ensure that subscales included equal numbers of individual items. The revised forgiveness scale thus consisted of 24 items that clearly and uniquely loaded onto five underlying factors. The first four subscales consisted of five items, and the last subscale consisted of four items. The 24-item scale can be found in the Appendix.

We used responses from our original sample for the confirmatory factor analysis. We chose to omit cases from which data were missing, rather than to use data substitution methods; these omissions

resulted in the loss of self-reports from only 16 participants, yielding a sizable sample (N = 565).

The confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the goodness-of-fit of the 5-factor model using the 24 items that we retained based on results of the exploratory factor analysis. We made use of a maximum likelihood (ML) estimation procedure. To allow for estimation, the variance of the factors themselves, and the paths between the error terms and variables, were fixed to 1. The model estimated the paths between the variables and the factors with which they were expected to associate, the error terms of the respective variables, and the covariances between the factors.

The analysis converged in ten iterations. All 24 items significantly loaded on each of their respective factors, with standardized loadings ranging from .57 to .95. As expected, each of the factors correlated with the others. Please see Table 2 for the correlations. Further, goodness-of-fit statistics met acceptable levels (NFI = .90; CFI = .92; GFI = .88; %2/df- 3.90), allowing us to conclude that the 5-factor model fit the data reasonably well (Bollen, 1989). To further determine the adequacy of the 5-factor model, we tested two alternative models that might have fit the data better. First, we tested the initial 3-factor model, including paths from a factor representing personal benefits, one representing interpersonal benefits, and finally, one representing religious-expressive benefits. This model did not fit the data as well (NFI = .85; CFI = .871; GFI = .79; and the χ^sup 2^/df ratio = 5.72). Further, because these models are nested, we were able to compute a chi-square difference score to determine whether the 5-factor model fit the data significantly better than did the 3-factor model. This difference test revealed that the 5-factor solution was a significant improvement over the 3-factor solution, χ^sup 2^(6) - 475.47, p < .001. Because the five factors correlated strongly with each other, we also tested a single-factor model accounting for the variance in the 24-item scale. This model fit the data poorly (NFI = .44; CFI = .45; GFI = .48; and a χ^sup 2^/df=21.11).

DISCUSSION

Not surprisingly, when participants called to mind harmdoing that made forgiveness an issue for them, they described a number of deleterious affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of that harmdoing. Participants reported feelings of anger, pain, sadness, confusion, and a sense of betrayal. Moreover, self-reported thoughts were commensurate with these painful emotional experiences. Most common among self-reported thoughts were disparaging characterizations of harmdoers, often in combination with thoughts or fantasies of revenge. Participants also attempted to make sense of offenses and their reactions to those offenses. Some participants contemplated temporary or permanent terminations of their relationships with offenders. Although participants reported thoughts of revenge, few reported attempts to exact vengeance on their harmdoers. Instead, most reported passive behaviors such as avoiding offenders or behaving with detachment when in their presence, and when asked directly, most participants reported forgiving harmdoers.

Initially, we predicted that three dimensions would underlie the self-reported experience of forgiveness: intrapersonal benefits for the victims of harmful transgressions, interpersonal benefits in the form of movement toward reconciliation, and religious-expressive benefits. Instead, we found five dimensions, because both the intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits dimensions were more complex than we had envisioned.

The forgiveness experience seems to involve two types of intrapersonal benefits to victims: First, the experience of forgiveness is characterized by the diminution of negative affect; second, the experience of forgiveness is characterized by self-transformation. Nevertheless, these self-reported dimensions of the forgiveness experience correspond closely to prior conceptualizations of the phenomenon. For example, a number of researchers have conceived of forgiveness as characterized by the relief of psychological pain (e.g., Al-Mabuk et al., 1995; Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000; Luskin, 2002), and by self-transformation or a greater sense of meaning that changes the way forgivers view the world and themselves (e.g., Fow, 1996; Frankl, 1984; Hope, 1987; Phillips & Osborne, 1989; Veenstra, 1992). Furthermore, the interpersonal benefits of forgiveness seem to reflect both interpersonal cognitions and interpersonal behaviors. Forgivers seem to differentiate between

empathy, compassion, sympathy, and understanding (e.g., Batson, 1990; McCullough et al., 1997) on the one hand, and conciliatory behaviors and the expression of goodwill on the other hand (e.g., Fow, 1996; Worthington & Drinkard, 2000).

Careful validation requires more than empirical results from a single sample of respondents. Minimally, results should be replicated in an independent sample of participants. It might be argued, for example, that the factor structure revealed in Study 1 capitalized on chance variance in the original sample. Study 2, therefore, was designed to test whether the 5-dimensional structure of the forgiveness experience holds in a second sample, and to replicate participants' self-reports of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral costs of finding themselves victims of another's harmful transgression.

STUDY 2

METHOD

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 204 participants (142 women, 61 men, one who did not specify gender) completed the "Forgiveness Questionnaire" in exchange for extra course credit in psychology classes at a large Midwestern university. Participants ranged in age from 16 to 48 years, with a median age of 19. Participants described their racial/ethnic group membership as Caucasian (83.8%), African American (3.4%), Asian or Asian American (7.8%), Hispanic (1.0%), or "other" (2.4%). The largest number of respondents described themselves as Catholic (38.7%), with Protestants (14.2%) representing the second largest religious group. Other participants described themselves as Evangelical (5.9%), Jewish (2.5%), Buddhist (0.5%), and Muslim (0.5%). A number of participants (14.7%) indicated that they were not affiliated with any organized religion, 21.6% described their religious affiliation as "other," and 1.5% did not indicate their religious affiliation. Thus, 59% of participants in this sample described themselves as Christian, with nonChristian affiliations (e.g., Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim) relatively uncommon. In fact, as in Study 1, more participants indicated that they had no religious affiliation (14.7%) than indicated affiliation with a nonChristian religion (3.5%).

PROCEDURE

The procedure in Study 2 was the same as that in Study 1, except that participants completed the modified 24-item Forgiveness Experience Scale in lieu of the previous 55-item scale with which we started.

RESULTS

POST-TRANSGRESSION THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, AND BEHAVIORS

Two carefully trained research assistants coded participants' open-ended responses using the coding scheme developed in Study 1. Disagreements were resolved by small-group discussion. Concordance distributions were very similar to those of Study 1. The mean concordance estimates were 0.95 for emotions (SD = .11), 0.71 for thoughts (SD = .35), and 0.73 for behaviors (SD = .34). Table 3 lists the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors mentioned by 5% or more participants.

These self-reports are highly similar if not identical to the descriptive data from Study 1. More specifically, participants who called to mind a painful past transgression again reported feelings of anger, pain, sadness, confusion, and a sense of betrayal; relatively fewer respondents reported feelings of depression, resentment, or frustration. The most frequently reported thought involved a search for reasons why offenders behaved as they did. More frequently than did participants in Study 1, participants in the current study contemplated their own culpability or role in the painful offense.

Participants also reported thoughts of relationship termination, disparaging thoughts about harmdoers, and thoughts of revenge. Again, avoidance of the offender in the aftermath of an offense was a common reaction among participants, as were behavioral manifestations of negative affect such as anger or sadness, and as were temporary terminations of relationships with offenders. As in Study 1, although self-reported affective and cognitive consequences of harmdoing were serious (including vengeful thoughts), few participants reported that they engaged in acts of retaliation. Also like Study 1, few participants (4.9%) spontaneously mentioned forgiveness in the immediate aftermath of the offense, but when directly queried, fully 78.2% reported that they had eventually forgiven those who harmed them. Finally, as was the case in Study 1, although tests of the difference between proportions revealed gender differences noted in Table 3, these differences were more the exception than the rule.

CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS

In keeping with the factor-analytic strategy in Study 1, we omitted participants from whom data were missing, yielding a sample size of 199. Using methods identical to those employed in Study 1, we first tested the fit of the 5-factor model for the 24 items included in the shortened forgiveness scale. The analysis converged in ten iterations. All 24 items significantly loaded on each of their respective factors, with standardized loadings ranging from .426 to .981. As expected, each of the factors correlated with the others (again, please see Table 2). Goodness-of-fit statistics met acceptable levels (NFI - .84; CFI = .90; GFI = .81; χ^sup 2^/df = 2.3), allowing us to conclude that the 5-factor model adequately fit the data (Bollen, 1989). As was the case in Study 1, a 3-factor model did not fit the data as well (NFI = .79; CFI = .85; GFI = .68; χ^sup 2^/df= 3.00). Indeed, a 5-factor model fit the data significantly better than did the 3-factor model, χ2(6) = 177.36, p < .001. Finally, a single-factor model again yielded a poor fit than did a 5-factor solution (NFI = .56; CFI = .60; GFI = .42; and χ^sup 2^/df=6.24).

DISCUSSION

This study largely replicates the findings of Study 1, both with regard to participants' descriptions of the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of harm done to them by another, and with regard to the dimensions that underlie their experience of forgiveness. When harmed by others, Study 2 participants' descriptions of the affective fallout of interpersonal harm were all but indistinguishable from Study 1 descriptions. Self-reported emotions ran the gamut from anger and pain to sadness and confusion. In addition, although participants' thoughts frequently focused on questions of why offenders behaved badly, and questions about victims' own culpability in transgressions, not all reported thoughts were as benign or potentially beneficial; as in Study 1, those harmed by others reported disparaging thoughts about their offenders, thoughts of revenge, and thoughts of relationship termination. Further, although participants expressed their pain and anger by crying or confronting offenders by yelling or screaming, most simply avoided their offenders or temporarily terminated relationships with them. Finally, despite negative affect, disparaging cognitions, and some initially maladaptive reactions, most participants reported that they had eventually forgiven those who harmed them.

The confirmatory factor analysis also replicated the results of Study 1 with a new sample-that is, although the concept of forgiveness can be relatively simply defined as a reduction in victims' revenge or avoidance motivations (e.g., McCullough et al., 1998), the experience of forgiveness reflects a more complex phenomenology.

Our subjective measure was supported by demonstrating that self-reports of separate samples of respondents yield comparable factor structures underlying the general construct in question. However, it is preferable to augment such an approach with studies in which systematic manipulation of variables related to forgiveness actually yield systematic differences in participants' self-reported forgiveness-related experiences. Such was the goal of Study 3, a questionnaire experiment in which we manipulated instructions to participants who were asked to reflect on offenses they had forgiven,

or on offenses they had not forgiven, and to complete the 24-item Forgiveness Experience Scale.

STUDY 3

OVERVIEW AND PREDICTIONS

In this questionnaire experiment, participants were first randomly assigned to different versions of the "Forgiveness Inventory." Approximately one-third of participants were randomly assigned to a condition in which each of them first recalled and described a time when another harmed them, and when they could not forgive the offender. Approximately two-thirds of participants were randomly assigned to recall and to describe an offense for which they did eventually forgive the offender. After describing the offenses and responding to a number of specific questions about their relationships with their offenders and the offenses themselves, participants who had forgiven were randomly assigned via task instructions to one of two conditions: Some forgiving participants were asked to complete the 24-item forgiveness scale to reflect their experiences before they eventually forgave their offenders, and others were asked to complete the forgiveness scale to reflect their current forgiveness-related experiences.

Study 3 also represents an extension of our previous studies. Given that participants who completed the 24-item forgiveness scale also provided information that would enable us to assess both the nature of the offenses they described and their closeness to their offenders prior to the offenses, in Study 3 we were able to assess the extent to which these and related variables differentially predicted such empirically robust components of the forgiveness experience as positive regard for offenders, motivations and actions facilitating reconciliation, beneficial affective changes, self-transformation, and finally, the actualization of Christian religious values.

We expected that compared both to participants who could not forgive and to participants who described their experiences prior to forgiving, participants who had forgiven would manifest higher scores on at least four subscales of the forgiveness scale: the reconciliation subscale, the positive regard for offender subscale, the self-transformation subscale, and the relief of psychological pain subscale. We were less confident that our experimental manipulations would differentially affect scores on the religious-expressive values subscale, for the actualization of Christian values may manifest itself in compassion and forbearance in the face of injustice and suffering (i.e., by emulating Jesus during his ordeals) or in the compassion and love intimately associated with forgiveness in the New Testament (i.e., by emulating the love and compassion of God and Jesus).

We also expected, consistent with past research (e.g. McCullough et al., 1998), that offense severity would significantly and negatively predict participants' scores on at least four of the subscales: the reconciliation subscale, the positive regard for offender subscale, religious-expressive values subscale, and the relief of psychological pain subscale. Regarding the self-transformation subscale, it was possible that offense severity would positively influence participant scores. Perhaps the greater pain that accompanies a relatively severe offense would serve as an impetus to the discovery of meaning through suffering, and to a consequent positive transformation of self; this speculation is in keeping with the tenets of Frankl's (1984) logotherapy, which is premised on the idea that greater suffering often leads to a greater search for meaning. We also expected that participants' religiosity would be related positively to both the religious-expressive and self-transformation subscale.

Extending prior research on the relation between victim-offender closeness and forgiveness (McCullough et al., 1998), we expected that closeness to offenders prior to the painful offense would differentially predict forgiveness experience subscale scores. Because relational closeness is associated with empathie accuracy, sympathy, and stronger habits of and continued potential for interaction, we expected that participants who experienced close relationships with offenders prior to their offenses would score higher on the reconciliation subscale, and would score higher on the positive regard for offenders subscale. However, because offenses perpetrated by close others represent greater threats to belongingness needs (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and because those

with whom we are close are expected to "care more" and to "know better," we expected that closeness to offenders would be negatively associated with scores on the relief of psychological pain subscale. We did not anticipate that prior closeness would significantly predict religious-expressive subscale scores or self-transformation subscale scores.

METHOD

PARTICIPANTS

One hundred, sixty-nine psychology students (55 men, 113 women, one who did not specify gender) participated in exchange for extra course credit at a large public Midwestern university. Participants ranged in age from 17 to 43, with a median age of 19 years. Participants were, for the most part Caucasian (79.9%), with the following racial/ethnic groups also represented: Asians or Asian Americans (10.1%), African Americans (4.8%), Hispanics (0.6%), and Native Americans (1.2%). As in samples in Studies 1 and 2, the largest number of respondents described themselves as Catholic (27.2%), with Protestants (23.7%) representing the second largest religious group. Other participants described themselves as Evangelical (7.7%), Christian (5.9%), Jewish (4.7%), Muslim (3.6%), Buddhist (0.6%), and as atheists (1.2%). A number of participants (13.0%) indicated that they were not affiliated with any organized religion, 8.3% described their religious affiliation as "other," and 1.8% did not indicate their religious affiliation. Thus, over 60% of participants in this sample described themselves as Christian, with nonChristian affiliations (e.g., Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim) relatively uncommon. In fact, as in our previous studies, more participants indicated that they had no religious affiliation (13.0%) than indicated affiliation with a nonChristian religion (10.7%).

DESIGN AND PROCEDURE

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: an after-forgiving, before-forgiving, or did-not-forgive condition. Participants in the did-not-forgive condition were asked to ". . . think carefully of a time when someone did something that made forgiveness an issue for you, and when you considered forgiving that person" and to "think of a time when you could not forgive that person (that is, you still haven't forgiven that person)."3 Participants in both the before-forgiving and after-forgiving conditions were initially instructed to ". . . think of a time when you did eventually forgive that person." After reading these task instructions, participants in all three conditions provided free-response information on the offenders' role in their lives (e.g., family member, romantic partner), provided a detailed description of the offenses themselves ("What exactly did this person do that hurt you?"), described what, if anything, the offenders did to make forgiveness easier, and what, if anything, the offenders did to make forgiveness more difficult.

All participants then provided more structured information about the offenses, their prior relationship with offenders, and their assessments of the severity of offenders' harmdoing-that is, all participants reported on the number of years, months, weeks, and days that had passed since the painful incidents. They then used a 10-point scale to report how close they felt to the offenders prior to their transgressions (0 = not at all close; 9 = extremely close), how hurt they were by the offenders' behavior (0 = not at all hurt; 9 = extremely hurt), their perceptions of the seriousness of the consequences of the others' harmdoing (0 = not at all serious; 9 = extremely serious), how morally wrong they viewed the others' actions (0 = not at all wrong; 9 = extremely wrong), how much they blamed their offenders for their transgressions (0 = I don't blame him or her at all; 9 = 1 blame him or her completely), and finally, to speculate on how much the offenders intended to hurt them (0 = had no intention to hurt me; 9 = had every intention to hurt me).

Specific instructions and item contents of the Forgiveness Inventory thereafter differed slightly, depending on the experimental condition to which participants were randomly assigned.

Did-Not-Forgive. Participants next encountered the 24-item Forgiveness Experience Scale, with instructions that read as follows: "Now we would like you to indicate how you are currently thinking

and feeling about the offense and the person who hurt you, given that you have not yet forgiven him or her." All items on the forgiveness inventory were written in the present tense (e.g., "I think a lot about the wrong the other person did to me."). Participants then used a 10-point scale to indicate how difficult they thought it would be to forgive their offenders eventually (0 = not at all hard; 9 = extremely hard). They then reported how long they believed it would take to forgive their offenders. Finally, before providing demographic information, participants used a 10-point scale to report their current level of closeness with the persons who had harmed them (0 = not at all close; 9 = extremely close).

Before-Forgiving. Prior to completing the Forgiveness Experience Scale items, participants randomly assigned to this condition encountered instructions that read as follows: "Now we would like you to indicate what you were thinking and feeling about the offense and the person who hurt you before you forgave that person . . . To the best of your ability, try to remember and to clearly describe what it was like before you forgave the person who hurt you." In this condition, individual items on the 24-item forgiveness scale were written in the past tense. After completing the scale, participants reported how hard it was for them to forgive their offenders (0 = not at all hard; 9 = extremely hard). They also indicated both how long it took them to forgive, and how long ago they succeeded in forgiving. They described how close they felt to their offenders after they had forgiven (0 = not at all close, 9 = extremely close).

After-Forgiving. Instructions preceding the 24 Forgiveness Experience Scale items read as follows: "Now we would like you to indicate what you were thinking and feeling about the offense and the person who hurt you after you forgave that person . . . To the best of your ability, try to remember and to clearly describe what it was like after you forgave the person who hurt you." As in the before-forgiving condition, participants encountered items written in the past tense (e.g., "I reconciled with the other person"; "I was able to look at myself differently than before"). Remaining items and response scales were identical to those encountered by participants assigned to the before-forgiving condition.

Finally, participants in all conditions provided demographic information on age, gender, race/ethnicity, and religious affiliation, and reported on the importance of religion in their everyday lives (0 = not at all important; 9 = extremely important).

RESULTS

In the section that follows, we first summarize participants' free response descriptions of their relationships to offenders, of the specific transgressions they called to mind, and of offender behaviors that either facilitated or mitigated forgiveness. Additional results are designed to assess the predictive utility of our experimental manipulations and other (nonmanipulated) predictors for participants' scores on the five forgiveness subscales.

FREE RESPONSES: CHARACTERISTICS OF THE OFFENSES AND OFFENDERS

Coders first carefully perused the free response items from all questionnaires to generate four taxonomies capturing (1) victims' relationships to their offenders, (2) the nature of offenders' transgressions, (3) what made it hard for victims to forgive, and (4) what made it easier to forgive. Final coding categories for each of these self-reports were established after group discussion between the authors and the coders. Coders then used these taxonomies to code participants' free responses to the four questions about the offenders' relationships with the participants, the nature of the offenses, offenders' post-offense behaviors that made forgiveness easier, and post-offense behaviors that made forgiveness difficult.

Relationship to Offenders. When queried about their relationships to offenders, 29% of the sample mentioned a friend, 23.7% mentioned a romantic partner, 16.6% described the offender as a "best friend," 12.4% mentioned a parent, 9.5% mentioned another family member, and 8% mentioned an acquaintance, stranger, classmate, or coworker. Thus, over 90% of all offenses were committed by

those with whom participants stood in close relation.

Offense Type. The most commonly reported offense in this sample was "cheating" by a romantic partner (18.3%). Acts of infidelity were followed by social exclusion or rejection by family or friends (10.7%), "stealing" a romantic partner away (8.9%), and broken commitments or promises (8.9%). Fully 7.1% of participants described violent acts committed against them, followed by offenses involving the keeping or divulging of secrets (6.6%); spreading of harmful rumors (6.6%); forms of mockery, ridicule, or disparagement, including racial epithets (5.4%); unexpected withdrawal of significant other, or sudden and unexpected relationship termination (4.2%); and theft of possessions (4.1%). Remaining offense descriptions were sufficiently anomalous that they did not warrant separate coding categories (e.g., forgotten birthdays, friend's hypocrisy).

What Made It Hard to Forgive? Concordance estimates ranged from O to 1.0 with a mean concordance of .71 (SD = .36), a median of .80 and a mode of 1.0. Please see Table 4 for the percentage of participant descriptions of offender behaviors that made forgiveness difficult. Several items in the table represent properties of the offense itself that made forgiveness difficult. Other participant reports reflect the absence or delay of remedial actions; for example, participants found it hard to forgive when offenders did not apologize in a timely manner, or when offenders behaved as if nothing happened. Difficulty forgiving was also exacerbated when the transgressions in question were included in of a series of related offenses, and when participants had decided that the offenders were incapable of remediation.

What Made It Easier to Forgive? Again, two trained assistants coded all the participant reports. Concordance estimates ranged from O to 1.0 with a mean concordance of .82 (SD = .27), and a median and mode of 1.0. Please see Table 5 for spontaneous mentions of offenders' actions that made it easier for victims to forgive. This table complements Table 4, in that many offender behaviors that made it easier for victims to forgive are precisely the behaviors, the absence of which made forgiveness difficult. Apologies, confessions, efforts to talk or reconcile, explanations for the offense, and expressions of care all made it easier for them to forgive their transgressors. In other cases, forgiveness was facilitated when offenders ceased their harmful behaviors or promised to do so. Of course, not all offenses were followed by offenders' attempts at remediation; fully 22.4% of participants reported that their offenders did nothing to facilitate the forgiveness process. Finally, a number of victims mentioned that they were more likely to forgive because of role-based obligations to do so (e.g., "She's my sister, and I had to live with her.")

PREDICTORS OF FORGIVENESS SUBSCALE SCORES

In an additional test of the validity of our conceptualization of the forgiveness experience, we conducted a series of regression analyses in which subscale scores were individually regressed on predictors of interest. The predictor of greatest interest to us was the experimental condition to which participants were randomly assigned (did-not-forgive, before-forgiving, after-forgiving), and we expected that forgiveness subscale scores for participants assigned to the after-forgiving condition would differ significantly from scores of participants in both the did-not-forgive and before-forgiving conditions. Thus, for the categorical independent variable, we employed a vector to test the significance of the contrast between the after-forgiving condition on the one hand, and the before-forgiving and did-not-forgive conditions on the other. A second contrast was designed to answer a methodological question of interest: whether the self-reports of those who had not forgiven were comparable to the retrospective self-reports of those who described their experiences prior to forgiveness.

For each of the five forgiveness subscales, we used a hierarchical regression analysis to assess the predictive power of the following variables: two vectors representing the three forgiveness conditions, participant gender, a composite measure of overall offense severity,4 a single-item measure of closeness to the offender before the offense, and the participant's self-reported religiosity. In the first step of the regression, we entered the two contrast vectors that represented the main effect for

experimental condition. In the second step, we simultaneously entered offense severity, pre-offense closeness, religiosity, and gender as independent predictors of forgiveness subscale scores. In the four subsequent steps, we entered six of the 2-way interactions that we considered theoretically plausible predictors of forgiveness subscale scores. For the first three steps, we consecutively entered two contrast vectors representing the interactions between religiosity and forgiveness condition, severity by forgiveness condition, and closeness by forgiveness condition. For the final step, we simultaneously entered the variables that represented the 2-way interactions between the following continuous predictors: closeness by severity, religiosity by severity, and religiosity by closeness. Results from the five regression analyses are described in turn below.5

Positive Regard for Offenders. Experimental condition, participant gender, the composite measure of offense severity, closeness to offender prior to the offense, participant religiosity, and interactions between these variables accounted for 36.2% of the variability in positive regard for offender scores (α = .77). Results revealed that participants in the after-forgiving condition reported significantly greater positive regard for those offenders (M = 3.38, SD = 1.39) than did participants in the before-forgiving condition (M = 2.66, SD = 1.42) or in the did-not-forgive condition (M = 2.42, SD = 1.48), β = .238, t(151) = 3.54, p = .001. The contrast between the before-forgiving and did-not-forgive conditions was not significant; those participants who provided retrospective reports of their experiences prior to forgiveness did not differ from those who had yet to forgive their offenders, β = -.047, t(151) = -.68, ns. The composite measure of offense severity significantly and negatively predicted positive regard for offender scores; as predicted, when offenses were relatively severe, positive regard for offenders was lower than when offenses were less severe, β = -.420, t(151) = -5.89, p < .001. Additionally, offense severity and participant religiosity interacted, such that when offenses were more severe, participants for whom religion was more important in daily life showed greater positive regard for offenders, whereas when offenses were relatively less severe, religiosity was not related to positive regard toward those who had harmed participants, β = .139, t(151) = 2.08, p = .04. Closeness to the offender before the transgression was also a predictor of positive regard for offender scores, albeit marginally so, β = .126, t(151) = 1.82, p = .07. No other variables, independently or in interaction, were significant predictors of positive regard for offender scores, all is < |1.7|, ns.

Reconciliation with Offenders. Reconciliation with offender scores (α = .75) were regressed on the same predictor variables described above; these predictors together accounted for 42.6% of the variability in reconciliation scores. Results revealed that participants in the after-forgiving condition were more likely to report behaviors conducive to reconciliation (M = 4.41, SD = 1.25) than were participants in the before-forgiving condition (M = 2.83, SD = 1.35) or in the did-not-forgive condition (M = 2.83, SD = 1.59), β = .424, t(151)= 6.65, p < .001. The contrast between the before-forgiving and the did-not-forgive conditions was nonsignificant, β = .034, t(151) = .511, ns. As predicted, participants engaged in fewer reconciliatory behaviors when offenses were relatively severe, β = -.278, t(151) = -4.12, p < .001. Also as predicted, participants who were closer to their offenders before the offense were more likely to report behaviors conducive to reconciliation after an offense, β = .153, t(151) = 2.32, p = .02. Finally, religiosity again emerged as an important predictor of reconciliation scores; victims for whom religion was important in daily life reported greater movement toward reconciliation with their offenders, β = .231, t(151) = 3.59, p < .001. No other variables, alone or in interaction, were significant predictors of reconciliation with offender scores, all ts < |1.31| ns.

Relief from Psychological Pain. Relief from psychological pain scores (α = .80) were regressed on the predictors listed above, which together accounted for 37.2% of the variability in scores. Participants in the after-forgiving condition (M = 2.72, SD =1.43) reported significantly greater relief from psychological pain than did those in the before-forgiving (M = 1.19, SD =1.04) or did-not-forgive (M = 2.66, SD =1.44) condition, β = .222, t(151) = 3.30, p - .001. However, unexpectedly, the contrast between the before-forgiving and did-not-forgive conditions was also statistically significant; those in the did-not-forgive condition reported greater relief from psychological pain than did participants in the before-forgiving condition, β = .421, t(151) = 6.13, p < .001. Offense severity was significantly and negatively associated with relief from psychological pain scores; the more severe the offense that made forgiveness an issue for victims, the smaller the affective relief afforded by forgiveness, β =

-.175, t(151) = -2.48, p < .02. As expected, participants who were closer to offenders prior to a painful offense experienced less relief from psychological pain than did those who were less close to their offenders, β = -.136, t(151) = -1.96, p = .05. No other variables, alone or in interaction, were significant predictors of relief from psychological pain scores, all is (151) < |1.7|, ns.

Religious-Expressive Benefits. Again, we regressed religious-expressive scores (α = .93) on the predictors previously listed; together, these predictors accounted for 37.7% of the variability in these scores. Recall that we did not necessarily expect that religious-expressive scores would differ significantly as a function of experimental condition. In fact, the first planned contrast revealed that religious-expressive subscale scores in the after-forgiving condition (M = 3.23, SD =1.67) did not differ significantly from the scores of participants in the before-forgiving condition (M = 2.58, SD =1.45) or in the did-not-forgive condition (M = 3.07, SD = 1.63), β = .093, t(151) = 1.45, ns. Results revealed, however, that participants assigned to the did-not-forgive condition reported significantly greater religious-expressive forgiveness experiences compared to participants in the before-forgiving condition, β = .131, t(151) = 1.98, p = .05. Of course, religiosity was the most powerful predictor of religious-expressive subscale scores, with participants for whom religion plays an important role in daily life reporting more religious-expressive concomitants of forgiveness, β = .569, t = 8.81, p < .001.

Meaning and Self-Transformation. Predictors (forgiveness condition, offense severity, participant gender, closeness to offender, religiosity, and two-way interactions between those variables) accounted for only 7.9% of the variability in meaning and self-transformation scores (α = .73). Given this relative paucity of predictive power, neither contrast between experimental conditions was statistically significant (after-forgiving M = 3.84, SD =1.43; before-forgiving M = 3 .59, SD =1.43; did-not-forgive M = 3.87, SD =1.43), βs < .07, ts(151) < |0.85|, ns. Although neither offense severity nor religiosity independently predicted meaning and self-transformation scores, the interaction between them was a significant predictor, β = .157, f(151) = 1.96, p = .05. A follow-up analysis revealed that as severity of an offense increases, religiosity becomes more important in ensuring positive self-transformation and a discovery of new meaning; thus, neither especially severe offenses nor the importance of religion in daily life yield self-transformation, but religious victims of severe offenses experience such benefits of forgiveness. No other variables, alone or in interaction, were significant predictors of meaning and self-transformation scores, ts (151) < |1.2|, ns.

DISCUSSION

In the current study we sought more elaborate characterizations of the kinds of transgressions that make forgiveness an issue for those who are harmed by them. We also sought to learn more about the predictors of a multidimensional forgiveness experience.

TRANSGRESSORS AND TRANSGRESSIONS

Fully 90% of participants, when asked about their role relationships with those who transgressed against them, identified those with whom they were psychologically close. In addition, although offenses ran the gamut from broken dates and forgotten birthdays to physical violence, the majority of offenses that evoke questions of the possibility of forgiveness proved substantially distressing to participants.

Offenders' actions after their transgressions influenced the ease or difficulty with which victims pursued or attained forgiveness. Participants reported that when offenders acknowledged wrongdoing or apologized, the arduous process of forgiveness was less difficult. Conversely, when offenders acted as if nothing happened or delayed recognition of their offenses, forgiveness was more difficult. Thus, in practice, the burden of forgiveness and the responsibility for it does not lie solely with victims; instead, it is facilitated when offenders join with victims to aid the process.

PREDICTORS OF THE FORGIVENESS EXPERIENCE

As expected, offense severity emerged as among the most uniform and powerful predictors of the multifaceted forgiveness experience. However, those for whom religion played an important role seemed to be buffered in many respects from the severity of their forgiveness-related travails. Not only did they experience the religious-expressive benefits of forgiveness, but those characterized by greater religiosity experienced the restoration of positive regard for those who harmed them, and experienced greater positive self-transformation when offenses were severe. In contrast, when offenses are relatively less severe, religiosity afforded no added benefits. It should be noted that these findings, based on participants' retrospective reports of transgressions committed against them, modify McCullough and Worthington's (1999) observations that in the forgiveness literature, those who are more religious than others are not necessarily more likely to forgive specific offenders in the aftermath of painful interpersonal harm (see also Subkoviak et al., 1995). Thus, although religiosity may not have a direct effect on victim's willingness to forgive, the current study is, to our knowledge, the first to demonstrate that religiosity can temper the deleterious effects of offense severity when victims call to mind specific instances in which they struggled with forgiveness.

Additionally, the closeness between victims and offenders prior to harmdoing is associated with the experience of forgiveness. As predicted, despite the fact that harm done by close others generated more psychological pain, a history of positive interdependence and intimacy with their offenders increased the likelihood of victims' reconciliation with them, and contributed somewhat to the restoration of victims' positive regard for them. This adds to prior work on forgiveness in that we show, as McCullough and his colleagues (1998) have, that closeness is associated with greater interpersonal forgiveness motivation, but additionally, that closeness to the offender produces greater personal psychological pain.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Among our goals in this series of three studies was to provide comprehensive documentation of the personal and social consequences of interpersonal transgressions sufficiently harmful that victims grapple with issues of forgiveness. Although participants in these studies were university students, the transgressions they described were not unique to young adults. Acts of infidelity, social rejection or ostracism, and the betrayal of confidences are sufficiently painful that people of most any age or life experience feel hurt, betrayed, or angry; entertain thoughts of revenge or disparaging characterizations of offenders; and attempt to distance themselves from the source of their pain and anguish.

The three studies reported herein allowed us to create and to validate a quantitative measure of the concomitants of the personal transformation associated with the experience of forgiveness. Studies 1 and 2 provided psychometric evidence of five dimensions underlying the personal (relief from pain, self-transformation), interpersonal (positive regard for offenders, reconciliation), and religions-expressive changes that victims undergo when they forgive. Study 3, an experiment, provided further validation of our conceptualization of the phenomenology of forgiveness when we compared the self-reports of those who had forgiven with those who either had yet to forgive their offenders, or who reflected and reported on their experiences before they had achieved forgiveness. Additionally, Study 3 enhanced our confidence in the validity of our conceptualization of the forgiveness experience by providing evidence of the differential effects of such situational variables as offense severity and prior closeness between victims and offenders on self-reported experiences underlying the attainment of forgiveness.

FORGIVENESS AS A COMPLEX EXPERIENCE

Scientific assessments of the effects of interventions designed to facilitate forgiveness often employ relatively straightforward and simple operationalizations of forgiveness as a desired outcome. As previously noted, McCullough and his colleagues (e.g., McCullough et al., 1997; McCullough et al., 1998) conceive of forgiveness as a decrease in motivation to avoid transgressors or to retaliate against them. Of course, this elegantly simple conceptualization of forgiveness, is compatible with the

experiences of those whom others have wronged; in our three studies, motivation toward and attempts at reconciliation with their offenders were most central to participants' self-reported experiences with forgiveness. Thus, movement toward reconciliation is not only one standard by which the efficacy of interventions can be assessed, but as revealed in the self-reports of participants in our series of three studies, is also the lynchpin of victims' subjective experience of forgiveness. Less easily observed, yet also pivotal to victims' experience of forgiveness is the self-transformation manifested in seeing oneself and the world differently than before, in finding a larger meaning, and in gaining wisdom and knowledge. For Christians in particular, forgiveness also affords a number of benefits, including manifesting both God's and Jesus's compassionate responses to wrongdoers, and in expressing humility in the face of their own human foibles.

Thus, observers, offenders, and even victims themselves may confidently conclude that they have forgiven when they are open to or actively pursue reconciliation with those who have harmed them. Yet, such outward manifestations belie the complex constellation of internal changes that characterize victims' experiences of forgiveness. As is the case with any number of social phenomena (e.g., aggression, helping, discrimination), we may know it when we see it, but such readily identifiable behaviors do not always do justice to the complex subjective experiences of those who manifest the behaviors in question. As our participants have reminded us, the unobservable concomitants of forgiveness take a specific form: desire for and steps toward reconciliation; the discovery of new meaning and the attainment of a different perspective; re lief from sadness, pain, and troublesome preoccupation; more positive characterizations of and greater empathy for offenders; and for Christians in particular, the opportunity to actualize religious teachings.

From these findings, we argue for a more differentiated construal of forgiveness, if our goal is not only to note its presence or absence, but also to enhance our understanding of the subjective experience of those who ultimately attain it. It is important to underscore that participants' self-reported forgiveness experiences need not always correspond to scientific conceptualizations of forgiveness, and in fact might be far richer and informative than even participants' own "denotative" definitions of the construct.

Indeed, in one of the very few other studies of lay conceptions (if not lay experiences) of forgiveness (Kearns & Fincham, 2004), reconciliation is demonstrated as central to lay conceptions of forgiveness. Kearns and Fincham (2004, p. 852) write, "Researchers have persistently argued that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation . . . Our results indicate, however, that 21% of participants thought that reconciling... was an important feature of forgiveness... Participants also frequently listed other features indicative of reconciliation . . . Moreover, all three of these attributes were considered central features of forgiveness." Our own research further highlights that lay experiences of forgiveness, particularly with respect to reconciliation, are at odds with research definitions.

A complex construal of forgiveness also affords a greater appreciation of the differential effects of both personal and situational factors on the subjective experience of forgiveness. For example, although serious wrongdoing is more difficult to forgive than is less serious wrongdoing (e.g., McCullough et al., 1998), the relation between offense severity and forgiveness is less direct and straightforward when one asks victims about the constellation of intrapsychic experiences that characterize their experience of forgiveness. Victims experience less relief from the psychological pain engendered by severe offenses, and are less likely to associate reconciliation with their experience of forgiveness. In addition, although severe offenses make it more difficult to recapture positive feelings for and construals of offenders, those for whom religion plays an important role in daily life are less affected by severe offenses than are those for whom religion plays a less significant role. Additionally, compared to those for whom religion plays a less important role in life, those for whom religion is important are buffered from the deleterious aftermath of severe offenses, and associate forgiveness with such positive self-transformation as seeing themselves and the world differently than before, gaining wisdom, and becoming better people. Also, although close relationships between victims and offenders are more likely than less close relationships to facilitate forgiveness, relationship closeness differentially affects the dimensions underlying the experience of

forgiveness; victims who were close to offenders prior to their transgressions are more likely to experientially associate forgiveness with improved regard for their transgressors and with motivations and behaviors facilitating reconciliation. Still, a history of psychological interdependence and affiliation can actually impede relief from psychological pain; the psychological pain engendered by close offenders lingers, even as victims experience forgiveness. In summary, although such factors as offense severity, relationship closeness, and religiosity seem straightforwardly related to whether forgiveness occurs, the subjective experience of forgiveness-the form that forgiveness takes-is considerably more complex.

IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELING AND STAGE MODELS OF FORGIVENESS

Experimental studies of the efficacy of interventions designed to foster forgiveness (e.g., Al-Mabuk et al., 1995; Coyle & Enright, 1997; McCullough et al., 1997), and counseling specifically designed to help clients to forgive (e.g., DiBlasio, 1998), have in common the explicit desire of research participants or clients to forgive those who have harmed them. The goals of most clients who seek professional counseling and the goals of most counselors or therapists who assist them seldom explicitly address forgiveness as a desired therapeutic outcome. Nonetheless, many of the presenting problems of clients involve the pain of past harms, deleterious preoccupation with those harms, and problematic relationships with those who have harmed them. Further, termination often follows from the kinds of personal and interpersonal changes associated with the experience of forgiveness, even if the attainment of forgiveness is not an explicit goal of counseling. Clients and counselors have achieved therapeutic success when clients experience relief from anger, sadness, anxiety, depression, and other distressing affective experiences; when clients achieve insights and find meaning that allow them to move on with their lives; and when clients' relationships with close others have improved.

These beneficial changes often unfold over time, and it is likely that even when forgiveness is not an explicit goal of counseling or therapy, stage models of forgiveness (e.g., Enright, Gassin, & Wu, 1992; Gassin & Enright, 1995; see also Gordon & Baucom, 1998) are relevant. Briefly, Enright and his colleagues assert that immediately after a harmful offense, victims confront the anger that follows, become aware of the extent to which they remain preoccupied with the transgression, and come to realize that they may be forever changed by the painful experience and that their views of the world may be permanently altered. Even if individuals do not entertain the potential for forgiveness or commit to working to achieve it, this may be the stage at which individuals seek professional counseling or therapy. Counseling may enable clients to take the perspective of those who harmed them, to nurture feelings of empathy for harmdoers, to acknowledge and accept the psychological pain associated with harmdoing, to discover meaning and gain insights into the psychological and social origins of their suffering and conflict with others, and eventually, to reconcile with those whose actions contributed to their preoccupation and distress.

We argue that many of the positive experiences associated with forgiveness are also associated with therapeutic progress, particularly for those clients who seek therapy as a consequence of interpersonal conflict or harmful offenses perpetrated by others. Thus, we believe that our multidimensional conceptualization of forgiveness may not only be useful to researchers who seek a more differentiated assessment of the effects of experimental interventions designed to foster forgiveness, but that it can also prove useful to counselors or therapists who desire a more structured way, over time, to target and assess clients' progress toward emotional relief, a newfound discovery of meaning through suffering and the therapeutic process, and the resurrection of empathy and affection for those who have harmed them, even if the word "forgiveness" never arises in counseling or therapy sessions.

[Footnote]

1. Among practitioners, theologians, and researchers, forgiveness is construed as a positive phenomenon. Of course, forgiveness may be preceded by a number of undesirable experiences, such as anxiety or internal conflict, and may sometimes be followed by regret and disappointment. Still, the experience of forgiveness per se is consensually viewed by scholars and researchers as positive and beneficial for those who attain it.2. For each participant's free responses to questions about affective, cognitive, or behavioral consequences, the formula for calculating concordance estimates is as follows:C = 2(C^sub 1^, C^sub 2^)/ C^sub 1^ + C^sub 2^, where C = coder concordance for each participant's free response about affective, cognitive, or behavioral consequences; (C^sub 1^, C^sub 2^) = number of identical affective, cognitive, or behavior categories assigned by Coders 1 and 2; C^sub 1^ and C^sub 2^ = the total number of categories assigned by Coders 1 and 2, respectively. Concordance estimates can range from 0 to 1, and obtained values indicated that coders were in general agreement when classifying participants' emotions (M = 0.92; SD = .166), thoughts (M = 0.70; SD =.358), and behaviors (M = 0.75; SD = .329).3. There are a number of expressions to capture the failure to forgive. We chose "could not forgive" rather than "would not forgive" or "did not forgive" to minimize participants' social desirability concerns and to avoid the appearance of an implicit value judgment on our part.4. When participants used a series of scales to describe the offenses, it was possible that the experimental condition to which they were randomly assigned would influence their assessments. For example, those assigned to the did-not-forgive condition might have felt the need to justify their failure to forgive by exaggerating the severity of the transgressions against them. Analogously, those participants who had already forgiven (in the before-forgiving and after-forgiving conditions) might have underestimated the perceived severity of the transgressions against them. Thus, to augment these subjective assessments of severity, two carefully trained coders rated each offense on a 10-point severity scale (0 = not at all severe; 10 = extremely severe). Intercoder agreement was high, r(168) = 0.85, p < .0001; therefore, we constructed an objective measure of offense severity by taking the average of the two coders' scores. We then constructed a composite measure of offense severity by converting both participants' ratings and the coders' severity ratings into a common metric (z-scores) and taking an average of those scores. This computation yielded an acceptably reliable composite measure of severity (α = .69).5. It should be noted that any between-group differences in subscale mean scores are not due to significant differences in the severity of the offenses that participants described; severity scores from participants in the after-forgiving condition (M = -0.13, SD = 0.58), before-forgiving condition (M = -0.01, SD = 0.67), and did-not-forgivc condition (M = 0.15, SD = 0.69) did not differ from one another, F(2,165) = 2.63, ns. Neither were between-group differences in subscale scores a function of significant differences in the amount of time that intervened between offenses and participants' self-reports of their forgiveness-related experiences; no experimental group differed significantly from any other in terms of the number of days that had transpired between the occurrence of the offense and participants' self-reports (Ms = 723 days, 594 days, and 786 days for the before-forgiving, after-forgiving, and did-not-forgive conditions, respectively), F(2,165) = 0.713, ns. Thus, neither differential offense severity nor differences in the passage of time account for between-group differences on forgiveness subscale scores.

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[Author Affiliation]IAN WILLIAMSONNew Mexico Highlands universityMARTI HOPE GONZALESUniversity of Minnesota

[Author Affiliation]Thanks are due and gladly extended to a number of committed and talented research assistants, without whose dedication, intelligence, and good cheer this project would have taken even longer to bring to fruition: Nikki Moore, KrisAnn Schmitz, Keri Zehm, and Tiffany Burkhardt.Address correspondence to Dr. Ian Williamson, Department of Behavioral Sciences, New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas, NM, 87701; E-mail: iwilliamson@nmhu.edu.