College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Beyond the anger

New study by Nathaniel Wade will look at what works to make people forgive.
Every day our feelings get hurt.

Many times those ways we have been slighted are easily forgotten and forgiven.

But what happens when those hurt feelings don't go away? Sometimes the feelings of anger will linger for days, weeks, even years.

Nathaniel Wade, assistant professor of psychology, knows this from first-hand experience. In his own personal life he has been on both sides of the fence - as offender and as the offended.

"We all remember a time when we have been hurt or felt slighted in some way," he said, "and many times we have thought about that hurt a lot and want to move on in our relationships."

One of Wade's primary research interests is the new and growing field of the psychology of forgiveness. He has received funding from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to test a hypothesis that has grown from his work on forgiveness that looks at different ways that people can forgive and move on from painful experiences.

"I have been investigating the effectiveness of psychological interventions to promote forgiveness in people who have been significantly hurt, but want to move beyond the anger and bitterness," he says. "I have found some initial evidence that while explicit forgiveness interventions are certainly helpful, they may not be necessary for helping people forgive."

Explicit forgiveness interventions are sessions where the hurt individual receives specific interventions intended to promote forgiveness, such as exercises to limit rumination about the offense.

Wade will run his study this spring with volunteer community members. The study will compare the efficacy of an established group intervention that explicitly promotes forgiveness with a general psychotherapy group and a no treatment comparison group.

A similar study with college-age students has initially shown that forgiveness interventions may not be truly necessary. Common therapeutic factors such as listening, catharsis and a therapeutic relationship might work just as well.

"We wanted to repeat the study to find out does it really matter to undergo explicit interventions or is it enough to just talk in a caring group," Wade said.

Wade's new study will also be different from previous studies in that the age of the participants will be more diverse than just college-age students.

"Age is certainly an issue in whether people forgive more quickly," he said. "Gender is also an issue because studies have shown that women are more forgiving than men, although women also report being hurt more frequently than men."

Wade anticipates that the participants in the new study will bring a variety of issues with them. Past research has worked with people who have been insulted or slighted in a small way.
Others have held grudges against someone who has offended a family member. Others have dealt with affairs or suffered physical or emotional abuse that they want to forgive. The main criterion in these studies is that the people involved want to work toward forgiveness.

"We will screen not only for people who have been hurt and have not forgiven but those who wish to forgive the person," Wade said. "But we also tell people just because you forgive someone doesn't mean that you have to get back into a relationship with that person."