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Personality and Self-Forgiveness: the Roles of Shame, Guilt, Empathy and Conciliatory Behavior

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Personality and Self-Forgiveness: the Roles of Shame, Guilt, Empathy and Conciliatory Behavior iournal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2010, pp. 1 -22 PERSONALITY AND SELF-FORGIVENESS: THE ROLES OF SHAME, GUILT, EMPATHY AND CONCILIATORY BEHAVIOR ANITA R. RANGCANADHAN AND NATASHA TODOROV Macquarie University The focus of this paper is on the somewhat neglected component of the forgiveness construct, seit-forgiveness, and its relationship to shame, guilt, empathy, and conciliatory behavior. A section of a theoretical model of self- forgiveness, proposed by Hall and Fincham (2005), was compared with a new model, to ascertain the role these emotional and behavioral factors played in influencing self-forgiveness. Participants were 91 first-year undergraduate psychology students and a community sample of 59 who completed self-report measures of each variable. Structural equation modeling revealed that the Hall and Fincbam model did not provide an adequate fit to tbe empirical data until the covariance between shame and guilt was incorporated into the model, unlike their findings, shame-proneness and personal distress empathy, rather than guilt and otber-oriented empathy, emerged as the key personality traits involved in inhibiting self-forgiveness. A new model emphasizing these findings is presented and implications for future research are discussed. Forgiveness as a psychological construct has become a topic of increasing interest to researchers in recent years. Yet despite emphasis on the multidimensional nature of forgiveness, and the importance of both forgiving oneself as well as others (Enright & The Human Development Study Group, 1996), the construct of self-forgiveness has still attracted comparatively little empirical We wish to thank Jutie Fitness for her assistance in commenting on previous versions of this paper. Correspondence conceming this article should be addressed to Anita Rangganadhan, 13 Sexton Ave., Castle Hill, Sydney, NSW, 2154 Australia. E-mail: a.rangganadhan@ hotmail.com. 2 RANGGANADHANANDTODOROV attention. Most research programs have tended to discuss the nature of self-forgiveness only within the context of interpersonal forgiveness theory (Tangney, Boone, & Dearing, 2005), attempting to draw parallels between forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others (for a full review see Hall & Fincham, 2O05). Correlational research however, indicates that self-forgiveness is OTÚy weakly correlated, and in some studies unrelated to forgiveness of others (e.g., Mauger et al., 1992; Thompson et al, 2005), suggesting a need for more focused study on the nature of self-forgiveness. According to theorists, self-forgiveness involves an objective fault or wrongdoing on the part of the offender and an acknowl- edgment of responsibility for the hurtful act, as opposed to simply condoning, excusing, or forgetting a transgression (Hall & Fincham, 2005). A conscious overcoming of self-resentment, and the working through of negative feelings such as guilt, remorse, and shame trig- gered by the offense are also considered necessary for the offender to be able to reach some sort of internal acceptance of themselves, and to experience moral growth (Hall & Fincham, 2005; Enright et al, 1996; Holmgren, 1998). In general, the limited extant self-forgiveness studies suggest that self-forgiveness is a beneficial attribute, related to psychological well-being. A failure to forgive oneself has been found to be "intro- punitive" and predictive of low self-esteem (Mauger et al., 1992), higher levels of neuroticism (Ross, Kendall, Matters, Wrobel, & Rye, 2004) and guilt (Zechmeister & Romero, 2002), while a self-forgiv- ing disposition appears positively associated with prosocial orien- tations such as friendliness (Walker & Gorsuch, 2002), a lack of hos- tility (Ross et al., 2004) and a trusting attitude (Mauger et al., 1992). Moreover, Mauger and colleagues (1992) using a clinical popula- tion, and a more recent study by Tliompson and colleagues (2005) using a large undergraduate sample, found that self-forgiveness was more strongly related to aspects of mental health than forgive- ness of others, with low trait self-forgiveness predictive of higher levels of depression and anxiety. A recent model of self-forgiveness proposed by Hall and Fincham (2005), proposes a number of social-cognitive, emotional, and of- fense-related factors that might constitute the motivation to forgive oneself following an interpersonal transgression (see Figure 1). Al- though Hall and Fincham's model in its entirety is focused upon sit- uational self-forgiveness, (how self-forgiveness may vary from of- fense to offense), a section of their model is particularly interesting PERSONALITY AND SELF-FORGIVENESS Empathy Attribution \ Perceived Forgiveness S J Irnm victim or Higher \ Power / \ \ Î Transmission Self GuiU Conciiialory \ Forgiveni ss \ \ t Severity / \ Shame FIGURE 1. Hall and Fincham's proposed modei of self-iorgiveness (2005). in light of the above research which suggests that people's scores on measures of äispositional self-forgiveness tend to be related to their scores on measures of mental health and well-being. Dispositional self-forgiveness refers to an individual's general propensity to for- give the self for failures and transgressions that cause harm to oth- ers (Hall & Fincham, 2005). For example, high levels of shame and guilt have been strongly linked to psychopathology (Abe, 2004), and excessive levels of these emotions would be expected to compound the difficulties associated with a lack of self-forgiveness. The section of Hall and Fincham's modei most relevant to a dispo- sitional self-forgiveness focus is shown in Figure 2. This model pro- poses that the two main emotional determinants of self-forgiveness are the self-conscious emotions of shame and guilt, and a review of the extensive shame and guilt literature suggests an intimate link between the resolution of these self-conscious emotions and self- forgiveness (Tangney et al., 2005). Guilt involves some combination of tension, remorse, anxiety, and regret resulting from the self's neg- ative evaluation of a specific behavior, and in line with the findings of previous research (e.g., Zechmeister & Romero, 2002; Strelan, 2006) is proposed as a barrier to self-forgiveness (Hall & Fincham, 2005). That is, individuals who are prone to experience guilt in re- sponse to their wrongdoing are more likely to punish themselves by not engaging in self-forgiveness, and thus not allowing themselves to get away with causing a hurt (Strelan, 2006). However, guilt is said to have an adaptive effect on relationships because the remorse and regret experienced during guilt helps to motivate behaviors orientated toward reparative action. These con- ciliatory behaviors such as apologizing, making restitution, or seek- RANGGANADHAN AND TODOROV Empathy i • Guill Conciliatory Self Behavior Forgiveness Sharr e FIGURE 2, The section of Hall and Fincham's proposed model (2005) most relevant to a disposidonal self-forgiven^s focus. ing forgiveness (Ausubel, 1955; Tangney, 1995; Wicker, Payne, & Morgan, 1983) may serve the function of easing an offender's guilt and the negative affect they associate with their culpability, pre- sumably because one is now doing the right thing (Hall & Fincham, 2005). Thus the model proposes that conciliatory behavior will act as a mediator between guilt and self-forgiveness. That is, high guilt- prone individuals are more likely to display higher levels of concil- iatory behavior following a transgression, which in turn promotes self-forgiveness by absolving an offender's guilt. Although engag- ing in conciliatory behavior is depicted as an offense-specific vari- able by Hall and Fincham (2005), it is possible that some individuals may display such behavior to a greater extent than others, so that it may be considered an individual difference variable together with proneness to shame and guilt. Guilt may however also influence self-forgiveness through its as- sociation with empathy. Empathy is a multidimensional construct consisting of a set of separate but related constructs (Davis, 1994), and several independent studies assessing shame-free guilt (guilt with shame partialled out) have consistently reported that guilt is positively related to the cognitive aspects of empathy (Tangney & Fischer, 1995; Leith & Baumeister, 1998). These include perspective- taking, defined as the ability to place oneself in another's shoes and comprehend his or her point of view, and empathie concem for another, that is caring about the welfare of others and becoming upset over their misfortunes (Davis, 1983, 1994). Existing research suggests that the other-oriented empathie concem fostered by guilt may actually work to prevent self-forgiveness from occurring PERSONALITY AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 5 (Zechmeister & Romero, 2002; Macaskill, Maltby, & Day, 2002). For example, Zechmeister and Romero (2002) found that compared to individuals who had forgiven themselves for an offense, those who had not reached self-forgiveness were more likely to report guilt, regret and other focused empathy. Empathy is thus also expected to act as a mediator in the process of self-forgiveness. That is, high guilt proneness is expected to be positively related to high levels of cognitive empathy which in turn will inhibit self-forgiveness, be- cause the more one feels one's victim's pain, the harder it is to for- give oneself for inflicting the pain. In contrast to guilt, shame involves an excessive and critical focus on the self, rather than the offensive behavior and is more likely to promote
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