A Meta-Analysis of Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity As Predictors Of
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FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS A Meta-Analysis of Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity as Predictors of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Forgiveness Lara Kireta This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the Honours degree of Bachelor of Psychological Science (honours) School of Psychology University of Adelaide October 2018 Word Count: 8,918 FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS Table of Contents TABLES ............................................................................................................................ iv FIGURES ........................................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vi DECLARATION ............................................................................................................. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Forgiveness Research ................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Defining Interpersonal Forgiveness: forgiveness for the sake of the relationship .... 1 1.2.1 Key concepts of Interpersonal forgiveness: Empathy and Altruism .................. 2 1.2.2 Defining Interpersonal forgiveness .................................................................... 3 1.2.3 Exploring Interpersonal measures of forgiveness .............................................. 3 1.3 Defining Intrapersonal forgiveness: forgiveness for the sake of the self .................. 4 1.3.1 Key concepts: emotional and decisional forgiveness ........................................ 4 1.3.2 Defining Intrapersonal forgiveness .................................................................... 5 1.3.3 Exploring Intrapersonal measures of forgiveness .............................................. 5 1.4 Variation in the types of forgiveness measures used ................................................. 6 1.5 Predictors of forgiveness: Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity ........... 7 1.5.1 Relationship Quality predicting forgiveness ...................................................... 7 1.5.2 Transgression Severity predicting forgiveness .................................................. 7 1.6 Exploring discrepancy with Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity ........ 8 1.6.1 Reconciliation contrasted with forgiveness ....................................................... 8 1.6.2 Exploring discrepancy with Relationship Quality ............................................. 9 1.6.3 Exploring discrepancy with Transgression Severity ........................................ 10 1.7 The Current study ................................................................................................... 10 1.8 Moderators: design, reporting of predictors and transgression methodology ..........11 1.8.1 Transgression methodology: recall vs hypothetical ......................................... 12 1.8.2 Study design: non-experimental vs experimental ............................................ 12 1.8.3 Predictor measurement: subjective vs objective/manipulated ......................... 13 i FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS CHAPTER 2- Method .................................................................................................... 14 2.1 Literature search and inclusion criteria ................................................................... 14 2.2 Study Eligibility ...................................................................................................... 14 2.3 Data collection and organisation ............................................................................. 17 2.4 Data Preparation...................................................................................................... 17 2.5 Statistical analyses and interpretation ..................................................................... 18 2.6 Between-subjects effects ......................................................................................... 19 CHAPTER 3- Results ..................................................................................................... 21 3.1 Study Characteristics .............................................................................................. 21 3.2 Study variability: predictors and type of measure used in each study .................... 24 3.3 Relationship Quality ............................................................................................... 26 3.3.1 Overall correlations for Relationship Quality predicting forgiveness ............. 26 ........................................................................................................................................... 27 3.3.2 Main effects for Relationship Quality and the types of measures ................... 28 3.3.3 Sub-group analysis ........................................................................................... 29 3.3.4 Exploratory Analyses ....................................................................................... 33 3.4 Transgression Severity ............................................................................................ 34 3.4.1 Overall correlations for Transgression Severity predicting forgiveness .......... 34 3.4.2 Main effects for Transgression Severity and the types of measures ................ 36 3.4.3 Sub-group analyses .......................................................................................... 37 3.4.4 Exploratory analyses ........................................................................................ 41 CHAPTER 4 - Discussion ............................................................................................... 42 4.1 Key findings ............................................................................................................ 42 4.1.1 Relationship Quality ........................................................................................ 42 4.1.2 Transgression Severity ..................................................................................... 44 4.1.3 Sample and study characteristics: Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity ................................................................................................................................. 45 4.2 Implications and future research ............................................................................. 47 4.3 Limitations .............................................................................................................. 49 4.4 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 50 ii FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS References .......................................................................................................................... 4 Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 4 Appendix A. PsycINFO, Scopus and PubMed Database Logic Grids ........................... 4 Appendix B. Search terms and Boolean operators used to create database- specific logic grids.................................................................................................................................... 6 Appendix C. Summary details of the meta-analysed studies ......................................... 8 Appendix D Coding Sheet ............................................................................................ 12 iii FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS TABLES Chapter 3: Results Table 1: Demographic and study characteristics for included articles Table 2: Main Effects for Relationship Quality and the types of forgiveness measures Table 3: Correlations for common Intrapersonal and Interpersonal forgiveness measures: Relationship Quality Table 4: Main Effects for Transgression Severity and the types of forgiveness measures Table 5: Correlations for common Intrapersonal and Interpersonal forgiveness measures: Transgression Severity iv FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS FIGURES Chapter 2: Method Figure 1: Flowchart of study selection process Chapter 3: Results Figure 2: Flowchart of articles included in the meta-analysis (n = 96) as categorized based on the forgiveness measures and predictors that they include Figure 3: Individual correlations for studies reporting an association between Relationship Quality and forgiveness Figure 4: Main Effects between moderators and Relationship Quality Figure 5: Individual correlations for studies reporting an association between Transgression Severity and forgiveness Figure 6: Main Effects between moderators and Transgression Severity v FORGIVENESS META-ANALYSIS ABSTRACT Forgiveness is a nebulous construct. There are many ways to define forgiveness, and as many ways to measure it. The two predominant ways to measure forgiveness are with relationship-focused measures (Interpersonal) and self-focused measures (Intrapersonal). With inconsistencies in predictor outcomes of forgiveness reported in forgiveness literature, this meta-analysis aimed to investigate whether the type of forgiveness measure used impacted upon these inconsistencies. To explore this issue, the current study meta-analysed results from 96 independent studies, exploring the correlations between Intrapersonal