Forgiveness and Revenge
PAPERS AND CHAPTERS
NEW!Bono, G., McCullough, M. E., & Root, L. M. (2008). Forgiveness, feeling connected to others, and well-being: Two longitudinal studies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. PDF
NEW!Here is a new paper that we recently submitted for editorial review. It is an attempt to identify the form of the forgiveness function, using some cues from theoretical and empirical work on forgetting. Comments welcome! PDF
NEW!McCullough, M. E., Root, L. M. Tabak, B., & Witvliet, C. v. O. (in press). Forgiveness. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Handbook of Positive Psychology (2nd ed.) . New York: Oxford. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Bono, G., & Root, L. M. (2007). Rumination, emotion, and forgiveness: Three longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 490-505 . PDF
McCullough, M. E., Orsulak, P., Brandon, A., & Akers, L. (2007). Rumination, fear, and cortisol: An in vivo study of interpersonal transgressions. Health Psychology, 26, 126-132. PDF
Bono, G. & McCullough M. E. (2006). Positive responses to benefit and harm: Bringing forgiveness and gratitude into cognitive psychotherapy. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 20, 147-158. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Root, L. M., & Cohen, A. D. (2006). Writing about the benefits of an interpersonal transgression facilitates forgiveness. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74, 887-897. PDF
Tsang, J., McCullough, M. E., & Fincham, F. D. (2006). The longitudinal association between forgiveness and relationship closeness and commitment. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25, 448-472. PDF
Hoyt, W. T., Fincham, F. D., McCullough, M. E., Maio, G., & Davila, J. (2005). Responses to interpersonal transgressions in families: Forgivingness, forgivability, and relationship-specific effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 375-394. PDF
Tsang, J., McCullough, M. E., & Hoyt, W. T. (2005). Psychometric and rationalization accounts for the religion-forgiveness discrepancy. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 785-805. PDF
Bono, G., & McCullough, M. E. (2004). Religion, forgiveness, and adjustment in older adults. In K. W. Schaie, N. Krause & A. Booth (Eds.), Religious influences on health and well-being in the elderly (pp. 163-186). New York: Springer. PDF
Exline, J. J., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Hill, P. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Forgiveness and justice: A research agenda for social and personality psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 337-348. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Mooney, C. N. (2003). Narcissists as “victims”: The role of narcissism in the perception of transgressions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 885-893. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Fincham, F. D., & Tsang, J. (2003). Forgiveness, forbearance, and time: The temporal unfolding of transgression-related interpersonal motivations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 540-557. PDF
Kendler, K., Liu, X., Gardner, C. O., McCullough, M. E., & Prescott, C. A. (2003). Dimensions of religiosity and their relationship to lifetime psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 496-503. PDF
McCullough, M. E., & Hoyt, W. T. (2002). Transgression-related motivational dispositions: Personality substrates of forgiveness and their links to the Big Five. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1556-1573. PDF
McCullough, M. E. (2001). Forgiveness: Who does it and how do they do it? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 194-197. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Bellah, C. G., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Johnson, J. L. (2001). Vengefulness: Relationships with forgiveness, rumination, well-being, and the Big Five. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 601-610. PDF
McCullough, M. E. (2000). Forgiveness as human strength: Theory, measurement, and links to well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 43-55. PDF
McCullough, M. E., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (1999). Religion and the forgiving personality. Journal of Personality, 67, 1141-1164. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Wade-Brown, S., & Hight, T. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships II: Theoretical elaboration and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1586-1603. PDF
McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 321-336. PDF. Note: Use of the five-item measure of forgiveness that we used in this study is not authorized, however. For more information please see Robert D. Enright (1999), "Correction to McCullough et al. (1997)", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, p. 218.
Measuring Forgiveness
Much of our work on forgiveness in the past few years has used a self-report measure called the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations (TRIM) Inventory. The version of the TRIM that is most widely in use right now is the TRIM-12. Here is a version of the TRIM-12 that includes scoring instructions, and technical and psychometric information. All credit to Dr. Susan Wade (now Susan Wade Brown) for developing these items as part of her doctoral dissertation at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.
More recently, we have also been using an 18-item form of the TRIM that includes items for measuring positive, benevolent motivations. The items comprising the 18-item form appear in this article.
Johan Karremans and Paul Van Lange) recently adapted the TRIM and created a Dutch Translation, which can be downloaded here. PDF. For more information see Karremans, J. C., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2004). Back to caring after being hurt: The role of forgiveness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 207-227.