Because we are cultural learners, we can learn valuable lessons about where and when to seek revenge and about where and when to forgive, simply by observing our parents, siblings, friends, associates, teachers, and mentors. We also learn culturally through religious teachings, myths, traditions, the arts, advertisements, items in the news, and other formal vehicles for transmitting cultural lessons. The informal codes that govern people’s social behavior in many U.S. inner cities, for example, convey reams of revenge-promoting cultural information. Likewise, the Amish are fed a steady diet of pro-forgiveness religious teachings and other cultural inputs that make them into the superforgivers they are. Most of us are in between the two extremes, raised on a diet of mixed cultural inputs, some of which promote revenge and others of which encourage forgiveness.
In certain cases, we can see macrolevel cultural changes developing to make the world a more forgiving place. One of those changes has taken shape over the past decade. Few people knew very much about the idea of a “truth and reconciliation commission” before the early-to mid-1990s, when El Salvador and South Africa put commissions in place to investigate human rights abuses during civil war (in the case of El Salvador) and apartheid (in the case of South Africa). Since then, the truth and reconciliation commission idea has been disseminated worldwide, and many people who’ve learned about it have helped establish similar commissions within their own nations—often to great effect. The United States Institute of Peace documents more than 20 nations that have used truth and reconciliation commissions following civil war. This is cultural learning at its finest, and on a truly global scale.
If the hundreds of scientific articles on human forgiveness—coupled with decades of work from evolutionary biology, primatology, and anthropology—show us anything, it’s that forgiveness is easier to achieve when we presume that natural selection has endowed the human mind with a “forgiveness instinct.” In that light, forgiveness is not an elusive or mystical force but rather a skill that the mind already possesses. Making the world a more forgiving place, then, does not require that we make miracles happen. It just requires that we learn to use a tool that’s already well within humanity’s reach.
THE NEW SCIENCE OF FORGIVENESS
Everett L. Worthington Jr.
WHEN CHRIS CARRIER was 10 years old, he was abducted near his Florida home, taken into the swamps, stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen with an ice pick, and then shot through the temple with a handgun. Remarkably, hours after being shot, he awoke with a headache, unable to see out of one eye. He stumbled to the highway and stopped a car, which took him to the hospital.
Years later, a police officer told Chris that the man suspected of his abduction lay close to death. “Confront him,” suggested the officer. Chris did more than that. He comforted his attacker during the man’s final weeks of life and ultimately forgave him, bringing peace to them both.
Chris Carrier’s act of forgiveness might seem unfathomable to some, an act of extreme charity or even foolishness. Indeed, our culture seems to perceive forgiveness as a sign of weakness, submission, or both. Often we find it easier to stigmatize or denigrate our enemies than to empathize with or forgive them. And in a society as competitive as ours, people may hesitate to forgive because they don’t want to relinquish the upper hand in a relationship. “It is much more agreeable to offend and later ask forgiveness than to be offended and grant forgiveness,” said the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I think many people today are inclined to agree with him.
Surely now is a time when the world could use some more forgiveness. Americans resent the Muslim world for September 11. Iraqis and much of the Middle East feel humiliated by the United States. Diplomats in the United Nations bicker and insult each other, igniting or reigniting national rivalries. Still, many people hesitate to ask for or grant forgiveness when they feel they have nothing to gain in return.
But a new line of research suggests something different. This research has shown that Chris Carrier’s story isn’t an anomaly. Forgiveness isn’t just practiced by saints or martyrs, nor does it benefit only its recipients. Instead, studies are finding connections between forgiveness and physical, mental, and spiritual health and evidence that it plays a key role in the health of families, communities, and nations. Though this research is still young, it has already produced some exciting findings—and raised some important questions.
FORGIVENESS AND HEALTH
Perhaps the most basic question to address first is, What is forgiveness? Though most people probably feel they know what forgiveness means, researchers differ about what actually constitutes forgiveness. I’ve come to believe that how we define forgiveness usually depends on context. In cases where we hope to forgive a person with whom we do not want a continuing relationship, we usually define forgiveness as reducing or eliminating resentment and motivations toward revenge. My colleagues Michael McCullough, Kenneth Rachal, and I have defined forgiveness in close relationships to include more than merely getting rid of the negative. The forgiving person becomes less motivated to retaliate against someone who offended him or her and less motivated to remain estranged from that person. Instead, he or she becomes more motivated by feelings of goodwill, despite the offender’s hurtful actions. In a close relationship, we hope, forgiveness will not only move us past negative emotions, but move us toward a net positive feeling. It doesn’t mean forgetting or pardoning an offense.
Unforgiveness, by contrast, seems to be a negative emotional state where an offended person maintains feelings of resentment, hostility, anger, and hatred toward the person who offended him. I began with Chris Carrier’s story because it is such a clear example of forgiveness. Although he never forgot or condoned what his attacker did to him, he did replace his negative emotions and desire for retribution with feelings of care and compassion and a drive toward conciliation.
People can deal with injustices in many ways. They don’t have to decide to forgive, and they don’t necessarily need to change their emotions. But if they don’t change their response in some way, unforgiveness can take its toll on physical, mental, relational, and even spiritual health. By contrast, new research suggests that forgiveness can benefit people’s health.
In one study, Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, a psychologist at Hope College, asked people to think about someone who had hurt, mistreated, or offended them. While they thought about this person and his or her past offense, she monitored their blood pressure, heart rate, facial muscle tension, and sweat gland activity. To ruminate on an old transgression is to practice unforgiveness. Sure enough, in Witvliet’s research, when people recalled a grudge, their physical arousal soared. Their blood pressure and heart rate increased, and they sweated more. Ruminating about their grudges was stressful, and subjects found the rumination unpleasant. It made them feel angry, sad, anxious, and less in control. Witvliet also asked her subjects to try to empathize with their offenders or imagine forgiving them. When they practiced forgiveness, their physical arousal coasted downward. They showed no more of a stress reaction than normal wakefulness produces.