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Practicing forgiveness may lead to higher well-being over time, according to a new multinational study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program.
The study was published Jan. 21 in npj Mental Health Research. Richard Cowden, research scientist with the Human Flourishing Program and in Harvard Chan School’s Department of Epidemiology, was the corresponding author.
Forgiveness is broadly defined as shifting one’s mindset toward those who have wronged us from ill will to goodwill, according to the co-authors. While previous research has found associations between forgiveness and well-being, the new study is the first to do so across many different cultures. It was conducted as part of the Human Flourishing Program’s Global Flourishing Study, which collects annual data on well-being among more than 207,000 participants across 23 geographically and culturally diverse countries.
The researchers asked participants about the frequency with which they forgave people who hurt them, then analyzed the responses in the context of participants’ reported well-being one year later. Well-being was composed of 56 outcomes covering psychological, social, physical, volitional, and material health and stability.
The study found that 75% of participants reported “often” or “always” forgiving those who hurt them, with country-specific rates ranging from 41% in Turkey to 92% in Nigeria. Those who forgave more often tended to report higher well-being the following year, particularly in the realms of mental health, purpose in life, relationship satisfaction, and hope.
Cowden elaborated on the findings in a Feb. 23 op-ed in The Conversation, writing that “the variation [in rates of forgiveness] across countries around the world suggests that forgiveness is shaped by cultural and contextual influences, including norms for preserving social harmony and religious teachings about responding to wrongdoing.”
He also wrote that “forgiveness isn’t a rare quality that some of us have and others lack … forgiveness is like a muscle we can strengthen.” For the 25% of participants who reported “never” or “rarely” practicing forgiveness, “there may be value in making resources available for those who want to forgive but find it difficult,” he wrote.
Cowden noted that the Human Flourishing Program launched the Global Forgiveness Movement with the goal of providing such resources, including a variety of workbooks people can use to guide them in forgiving a particular hurt. “If we can expand opportunities for people to consider, access and engage with forgiveness tools in ways that preserve autonomy, safety and justice, the benefits to individual well-being may ripple outward into a more flourishing humanity,” Cowden wrote.
Read the study: Longitudinal associations of dispositional forgivingness with multidimensional well-being: a two-wave outcome-wide analysis in the Global Flourishing Study
Read the op-ed: Forgiveness isn’t always easy, but studies show it can help you flourish
