A laboratory experiment tested whether conciliatory behavior predicts lower blood pressure following spouses’ discussion of a recent marital transgression. Sixty-eight married couples discussed unresolved transgressions—with random assignment determining whether the husband or the wife was in the victim role—and then rated victim and perpetrator conciliatory behavior (with the former akin to fo...

S FOR LISTED 2009 EMPIRICAL PUBLICATIONS (ONLY FIRST AUTHOR LISTED UNLESS MULTIPLE ARTICLES BY SAME FIRST AUTHOR) Note: In press abstracts not included Balkin The professional literature diverges in defining the role of forgiveness and reconciliation in counseling regarding how forgiveness and reconciliation are conceptualized from a professional and secular perspective. The Jewish conceptualiz...

S FOR LISTED 2009 EMPIRICAL PUBLICATIONS (ONLY FIRST AUTHOR LISTED UNLESS MULTIPLE ARTICLES BY SAME FIRST AUTHOR) Note: In press abstracts not included Balkin The professional literature diverges in defining the role of forgiveness and reconciliation in counseling regarding how forgiveness and reconciliation are conceptualized from a professional and secular perspective. The Jewish conceptualiz...

Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 2005, 37:4, 299-308 Abstract Forgiveness is one construct that is beginning to demonstrate promise as a health and relationship promoter within the workplace. The primary aim of this research was to examine the effects of one psychological intervention (social motivational training) that was developed to promote forgiveness among co-workers. In the first...

At the center of this paper are three questions: in the absence of a religious worldview, can one gain access to the concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation, can reconciliation be achieved in the absence of forgiveness or does the former depend in some way upon the latter, and can we make sense of a restorative approach to justice in the absence of either forgiveness or reconciliation? To an...

This study examined the ways in which individuals communicatively negotiate the process of forgiveness in nonvoluntary (family) relationships. Drawing from relational dialectics theory (RDT) as well as other dialogic perspectives on forgiveness (e.g., Waldron & Kelley, 2008), we examined the complexity of communicating forgiveness in nonvoluntary relationships. Participants’ experiences support...

Forgiveness is no simple matter either to execute or to understand. Charles Griswold explores forgiveness both in its guise as a virtue⎯I’ll call it “forgivingness”⎯and as something that’s more difficult to categorize, something like an act or process. Griswold’s Forgiveness provides a classical philosophical analysis of the act or process, “a theory of paradigmatic forgiveness⎯of what forgi...

How to maintain relatedness in the context of being harmed by others, especially an intimate partner, is a fundamental human challenge. Forgiveness provides a way of meeting this challenge as it removes the barrier to relatedness caused by a transgression. But scientists know very little about forgiveness and its role in close relationships. This article therefore offers a conceptual analysis o...

RATIONALE This study investigates the intrapersonal and interpersonal factors and processes that are associated with patient forgiveness of a provider in the aftermath of a harmful medical error. OBJECTIVE This study aims to examine what antecedents are most predictive of patient forgiveness and non-forgiveness, and the extent to which social-cognitive factors (i.e., fault attributions, empat...

The majority of the world population profess religious/spiritual beliefs and prayer is a form of spiritual activity common across numerous religious/spiritual belief systems. Three studies therefore examined the role of prayer in romantic relationships. Study 1 (n = 91) showed that prayer for a dating partner predicted lower aggressive tendencies and greater forgiveness of partner transgression...