Showing papers by "Michael E. McCullough published in 2007"

Rumination, emotion, and forgiveness: three longitudinal studies.

Abstract: In 3 studies, the authors investigated whether within-persons increases in rumination about an interpersonal transgression were associated with within-persons reductions in forgiveness. Results supported this hypothesis. The association of transient increases in rumination with transient reductions in forgiveness appeared to be mediated by anger, but not fear, toward the transgressor. The association of rumination and forgiveness was not confounded by daily fluctuations in positive affect and negative affect, and it was not moderated by trait levels of positive affectivity, negative affectivity, or perceived hurtfulness of the transgression. Cross-lagged associations of rumination and forgiveness in Study 3 more consistently supported the proposition that increased rumination precedes reductions in forgiveness than the proposition that increased forgiveness precedes reductions in rumination.

Rumination, fear, and cortisol: An in vivo study of interpersonal transgressions.

Abstract: The authors sought to examine whether rumination about psychologically painful, though nontraumatic, interpersonal transgressions is associated with increased salivary cortisol. They measured salivary cortisol, rumination about a transgression, fear and anger regarding the transgressor, perceived painfulness of the transgression, and positive and negative mood in 115 undergraduates who had experienced an interpersonal transgression during the previous 7 days. They obtained measurements on as many as 5 occasions separated by approximately 14 days each. On occasions when participants reported that they had been ruminating to a degree that was greater than was typical for them, they had higher levels of salivary cortisol than was typical for them. The rumination- cortisol association appeared to be mediated by fear of the transgressor. Rumination about even moderately painful but nontraumatic life events and associated emotions are related to biological changes that may subserve social goals such as avoiding social threats. Items from the rumination scale are appended.

Forgiveness as Change

Abstract: Imagine for a moment that instead of being interested in forgiveness, you are inter-ested in the athletic performance of mountain climbers. One morning, fi ve climb-ers are dropped by helicopter at random points between 1,000 and 5,000 feet above sea level. They climb for the next 12 hours. Your climbers are carrying altimeters that record their altitude at the beginning and at the end of the 12-hour period. At the end of the observation period, you want to fi gure out how much each of your climbers progressed. What would you do with the available data to get an answer?

BRIEF REPORT Rumination, Fear, and Cortisol: An In Vivo Study of Interpersonal Transgressions

Abstract: The authors sought to examine whether rumination about psychologically painful, though nontraumatic, interpersonal transgressions is associated with increased salivary cortisol. They measured salivary cortisol, rumination about a transgression, fear and anger regarding the transgressor, perceived painfulness of the transgression, and positive and negative mood in 115 undergraduates who had experienced an interpersonal transgression during the previous 7 days. They obtained measurements on as many as 5 occasions separated by approximately 14 days each. On occasions when participants reported that they had been ruminating to a degree that was greater than was typical for them, they had higher levels of salivary cortisol than was typical for them. The rumination- cortisol association appeared to be mediated by fear of the transgressor. Rumination about even moderately painful but nontraumatic life events and associated emotions are related to biological changes that may subserve social goals such as avoiding social threats. Items from the rumination scale are appended.

Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS): A Beginner's Guide

Abstract: In collaboration with the advisory board of the ERS project: Religion has been studied from a scholarly and scientific perspective for as long as there have been scholars and scientists. religion from a naturalistic perspective, without invoking the actual existence of supernatural agents or events. Today, there is an enormous body of information on religious phenomena from a naturalistic perspective. Much of it is descriptive but there is also plenty of quantitative information, gathered and analyzed by the tools of modern science. Some studies are conducted without any theoretical framework in mind but there are also numerous attempts to understand religion from a particular theoretical perspective, such as Marxism, Freudian psychology, or rational choice theory. Against this background, studying religious phenomena from an evolutionary perspective is both old and new. Darwin and his colleagues were keenly interested in studying all aspects of humanity from an evolutionary perspective, including religion. However, this inquiry led in directions that can be recognized as false in retrospect. Cultural evolution was envisioned as a linear progression from " savagery " to " civilization, " with European societies most advanced (Carniero 2003). Herbert Spencer and others used evolution to justify a hierarchical society (" Social Darwinism ") and non-egalitarian social practices such as eugenics (Richards 1987). These views were probably inevitable against the background of Victorian culture, as Janet Browne's (1995, 2002) magnificent 2-volume biography of Darwin and his times attests. Rather than challenging the support that evolutionary theory lent to such views, many scholars and scientists rejected the theory as a useful framework for understanding our species, however insightful it might be for understanding the rest of life. In this fashion,

Low-cost interventions for promoting forgiveness

Abstract: It is a truism of social and clinical psychology that norm-violating interpersonal behavior can cause behavioral, psychological, health-related problems for victims. Serious life events caused by other people—violent crime, for example—can of course have long-standing effects, but even less overtly harmful events such as hurt feelings (Leary, Springer, Negel, Ansell, & Evans, 1998), social exclusion (Leary, Cottrell, & Phillips, 2001; Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2003), and rejection (Nolan, Flynn, & Garber, 2003) can elicit sadness, depression, anger, anxiety, and other negative outcomes. For example, discovering that one’s spouse has been sexually unfaithful is associated with a sixfold increase in the likelihood of being diagnosed with a major depressive disorder (Cano & O’Leary, 2000) and being humiliated is associated with a 70% increase in the likelihood of major depressive disorder (Kendler, Hettema, Butera, Gardner, & Prescott, 2003). Perhaps because of the pervasive norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), which dictates that people respond in kind when others harm them, transgressions frequently stimulate two negative motivations: the motivation to avoid and the motivation to seek revenge against the transgressor (McCullough et al., 1998; McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997). These transgression-related interpersonal motivations, or TRIMs, may be accompanied by reduced benevolent motivation toward the transgressor (McCullough et al., 1997). Although these motivational reactions to transgressions may be present in the human behavioral repertoire because they are (or were) functional (Bushman, Baumeister, & Phillips, 2001; Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischoff, 2003; McCullough, Bellah, Kilpatrick, & Johnson, 2001), they can have insidious societal and relational effects: Feeling avoidant and vengeful toward one’s transgressor impedes the restoration of that relationship (McCullough et al., 1998). In addition, feeling vengeful after suffering a perceived interpersonal harm underlies a considerable amount of destruction and human aggression (Baumeister, 1996), including workplace aggression (Douglas & Martinko, 2001), school violence/adolescent aggression (Delveaux & Daniels, 2000; Pfefferbaum & Wood, 1994), driver aggression (Wiesenthal, Hennessy, & Gibson, 2000), and even arson (Masayuki, 1995; Prins, 1995; Swaffer & Hollin, 1995).