Forgiveness, Forbearance, and Time: The Temporal Unfolding of
Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations
Michael E. McCullough
Southern Methodist University
Frank D. Fincham
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Jo-Ann Tsang
Southern Methodist University
The investigators proposed that transgression-related interpersonal motivations result from 3 psycholog-
ical parameters: forbearance (abstinence from avoidance and revenge motivations, and maintenance of
benevolence), trend forgiveness (reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases in benevolence), and
temporary forgiveness (transient reductions in avoidance and revenge, and transient increases in benev-
olence). In 2 studies, the investigators examined this 3-parameter model. Initial ratings of transgression
severity and empathy were directly related to forbearance but not trend forgiveness. Initial responsibility
attributions were inversely related to forbearance but directly related to trend forgiveness. When people
experienced high empathy and low responsibility attributions, they also tended to experience temporary
forgiveness. The distinctiveness of each of these 3 parameters underscores the importance of studying
forgiveness temporally.
The concept of forgiveness has long been a focus of the world’s
religions (McCullough & Worthington, 1999; Rye et al., 2000),
but only during the last decade did psychologists develop a sus-
tained interest in the topic. Recent work has shed light on the
social–psychological precursors to forgiveness (Exline &
Baumeister, 2000; Fincham, 2000; Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, &
Hannon, 2002; McCullough, Bellah, Kilpatrick, & Johnson, 2001;
McCullough et al., 1998; McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal,
1997), the personality processes underlying forgiveness (McCul-
lough, 2001; McCullough & Hoyt, 2002), the process by which
reasoning about forgiveness develops as people age (Enright,
Santos, & Al-Mabuk, 1989; Mullet & Girard, 2000), the effects of
forgiveness on physiological parameters such as blood pressure
and respiration (Witvliet, Ludwig, & Vander Laan, 2001), and
even the efficacy of clinical interventions for promoting forgive-
ness (for reviews, see Enright & Coyle, 1998; Worthington et al.,
2000).
As a prolegomenon to research in this area, most researchers
have sought to specify what they mean by the term forgiveness.
Many of the definitions they have proffered share only a modest
degree of resemblance. Consider three examples: Enright and
colleagues (e.g., Enright, Gassin, & Wu, 1992) defined forgiveness
as “the overcoming of negative affect and judgement toward the
offender, not by denying ourselves the right to such affect and
judgement, but by endeavoring to view the offender with compas-
sion, benevolence, and love” (p. 101). Exline and Baumeister
(2000) defined forgiveness as the “cancellation of a debt” by “the
person who has been hurt or wronged” (p. 133). Finally, McCul-
lough et al. (1997) defined forgiveness as
the set of motivational changes whereby one becomes (a) decreasingly
motivated to retaliate against an offending relationship partner; (b)
decreasingly motivated to maintain estrangement from the offender;
and (c) increasingly motivated by conciliation and goodwill for the
offender, despite the offender’s hurtful actions. (pp. 321–322)
Despite the obvious differences among such definitions, they
share an important feature—the assumption that forgiveness in-
volves prosocial change regarding a transgressor on the part of the
transgression recipient. Indeed, nearly every theorist appears to
concur that when people forgive, their responses (i.e., thoughts,
feelings, behavioral inclinations, or actual behaviors) toward a
transgressor become more positive and/or less negative. This point
of consensus led McCullough, Pargament, and Thoresen (2000) to
propose that intraindividual prosocial change toward a transgressor
is a foundational and uncontroversial feature of forgiveness.
Paradoxical Views of Forgiveness: Cross-Sectional and
Longitudinal Approaches
Because prosocial psychological change is a hallmark of for-
giveness and because change requires the passage of time, time is
necessarily an intrinsic aspect of forgiveness. However, the theo-
Michael E. McCullough and Jo-Ann Tsang, Department of Psychology,
Southern Methodist University; Frank D. Fincham, Department of Psy-
chology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Jo-Ann Tsang is now at the Department of Psychology, Baylor
University.
Preparation of this article was generously supported by a grant from A
Campaign for Forgiveness Research to Michael E. McCullough and a grant
from the John Templeton Foundation to Frank D. Fincham. We thank
Benjamin Karney and Jennifer Krull for helpful statistical advice.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Michael E.
McCullough, who is now at the Department of Psychology, University of
Miami, P.O. Box 248185, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-2070. E-mail:
mikem@miami.edu
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
2003, Vol. 84, No. 3, 540–557 0022-3514/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.3.540
540
retical and methodological implications of a temporal view of
forgiveness have been neglected. This neglect is illustrated by the
fact that most researchers have measured forgiveness in terms of
an individual’s self-reported cognitions, emotions, motivations, or
behaviors toward a transgressor at a single point in time. For
example, McCullough and colleagues (e.g., McCullough et al.,
1998; McCullough & Hoyt, 2002) have used cross-sectional or
instantaneous measurements of transgression recipients’ vengeful,
avoidant, and benevolent feelings toward someone who committed
a transgression against them as measures of how much they had
forgiven their transgressors. Implicit in such operationalizations is
the assumption that people who report low avoidance motivation,
low revenge motivation, and high benevolence toward a transgres-
sor instantaneously have forgiven to a greater extent than have
people with high avoidance and revenge motivation and low
benevolence.
Such an approach has its virtues. Instantaneous measurements of
people’s motivations toward a transgressor correlate well with
self-reports of how much they have forgiven the transgressor
(McCullough et al., 1998) and are related to traits that theoretically
should predict individual differences in forgiveness (McCullough
& Hoyt, 2002). However, assessing forgiveness with instantaneous
scores confounds conclusions about intraindividual longitudinal
change with cross-sectional interindividual differences. Moreover,
when one neglects the temporal nature of forgiveness, paradoxes
arise in the conclusions one might draw about how much an
individual has actually forgiven.
Consider two persons—Alan and Bill—each of whom incurred
an interpersonal transgression (see Figure 1). On the day of the
transgression (Day 0), Alan and Bill complete a set of 5-point
Likert-type items measuring motivation to seek revenge against
the transgressor (1 ⫽ very weak motivation to seek revenge,5⫽
very strong motivation to seek revenge; see Appendix to McCul-
lough et al., 1998). Alan reports a mean score of 4.0 on the revenge
items, and Bill reports a mean score of 3.1. Because a low degree
of revenge motivation is presumed to indicate a high degree of
forgiveness, a cross-sectional conceptualization of forgiveness
leads to the conclusion from these instantaneous measurements
that Bill has forgiven to a greater degree than has Alan because the
difference in their revenge motivations is 3.1 ⫺ 4.0 ⫽⫺0.9 scale
units.
The paradox emerges when one considers instantaneous mea-
sures of revenge motivations for Alan and Bill 5 weeks later (i.e.,
on Day 35). At this time, Alan has a mean score of 3.1, and Bill
maintains his mean score of 3.1. With these Day 35 measurements
as the reference point, one can conclude that Alan and Bill have
forgiven to the same degree (i.e., the difference in their revenge
motivations is 3.1 ⫺ 3.1 ⫽ 0.0).
The paradox extends further, as one can see by considering
longitudinal change in revenge motivation. To be faithful to the
essentially time-bound nature of forgiveness, one might attempt to
measure forgiveness across the 5-week period for Alan and Bill in
terms of change in their two instantaneous measurements. Sub-
tracting Alan’s Day 35 score from his Day 0 score yields a change
of 3.1 ⫺ 4.0 ⫽⫺0.9. Subtracting Bill’s Day 35 score from his
Day 0 score yields a change of 3.1 ⫺ 3.1 ⫽ 0.0. Because Alan’s
revenge motivations diminished more over the 5-week period than
did Bill’s, one would likely conclude that Alan had forgiven to a
greater degree over the 5 weeks than had Bill, even though Bill
was less vengeful than Alan on Day 0. Thus, depending on how
forgiveness is defined and operationalized, one can draw any of
three mutually exclusive conclusions about differences in forgive-
ness between Alan and Bill. (For this example, we could have used
avoidance or benevolence in place of revenge, although increases,
rather than decreases, in benevolence would have been indicative
of forgiveness.)
We propose to resolve this paradox by modeling forgiveness
explicitly as a process of temporal change that can best be ob-
served with the passage of time and with explicit comparison of
one’s current psychological state with one of two benchmarks. The
model we propose actually specifies two types of forgiveness
(called trend forgiveness and temporary forgiveness, for reasons
we explain shortly) that differ in terms of the benchmark that is
used to derive them. However, in considering both types of for-
giveness, we assess forgiveness by determining the extent to which
an individual’s instantaneous motivations deviate either from an
initial post-transgression value or from an expected value. Pres-
ently, we argue that measuring forgiveness as the time-bound
process that most scholars take for granted requires assessing
transgression recipients’ instantaneous motivations toward their
transgressors at repeated points in time and then decomposing
these repeated measures into (a) a component of variance
representing their initial post-transgression standing on the
transgression-related interpersonal motivation (TRIM) in question,
(b) a component representing longitudinal change in the individ-
uals’ scores on these measurements, and (c) residuals that repre-
Figure 1. Revenge motivations for Alan and Bill on Day 0 and Day 35.
541
FORGIVENESS, FORBEARANCE, AND TIME
sent deviations from the instantaneous values that would be ex-
pected on the basis of the individuals’ initial status and degree of
linear change over time.
Forbearance, Two Types of Forgiveness, and Time:
A Mathematical Model
So far in the present article, we have defined forgiveness as
prosocial motivational change. We have also proposed that mea-
suring forgiveness requires repeated longitudinal measures of
these motivations so that a longitudinal trajectory for an individ-
ual’s TRIMs can be established. To clarify how instantaneous
measures of these TRIMs and their longitudinal trajectories relate
to forgiveness, it is useful to invoke the concept of forbearance.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1993) defined for-
bear as “to bear with; endure” but also as “to control oneself when
provoked” (p. 886). Forbearance was defined by Webster’s as “a
delay in enforcing or a suspension of or a refraining from enforc-
ing debts, rights of action, rights, privileges, claims, or obliga-
tions,” or “the exercise of patience or restraint,” or “indulgence
toward one’s offenders or enemies” (p. 886). Thus, the term
forbearance can be used in a purely descriptive sense to refer to
the state of toleration or moderated reaction to a transgression.
Forbearance need not be understood as a characteristic of persons
(as when some people are characterized as being more forbearing
than others); it can also be understood as a characteristic of one’s
reaction to a specific transgression, regardless of whether the
reaction is caused by characteristics of the person (e.g., personality
traits), the relationship (i.e., the nature or quality of the relationship
between the transgressor and victim), or the transgression (e.g., its
severity).
It is in this latter sense that we invoke the term. We propose that
an individual’s TRIMs at a discrete point in time are the result of
several psychologically meaningful parameters: (a) the initial de-
gree to which he or she forbore the transgression (which we call
forbearance), (b) the extent to which he or she has forgiven the
transgressor since their initial reaction (which we call trend for-
giveness), and (c) deviation from the instantaneous value that
would be expected on the basis of these two parameters (which, for
reasons we explain below, may be composed in part of what we
call temporary forgiveness). In this conceptualization, we would
say that Bill, from our example above, forbore his transgression to
a greater degree (i.e., he experienced less revenge motivation
initially) than did Alan but that Alan actually forgave more be-
tween Day 0 and Day 35 (i.e., his revenge motivations de-
creased 0.9 scale score points) than did Bill (whose revenge
motivations did not decrease at all). Adding the concept of for-
bearance explicitly to our discussion of the data points in Figure 1
allows for a clear resolution to the paradox of measuring
forgiveness.
Forbearance and Trend Forgiveness
Forbearance and forgiveness can be formalized with a simple
linear model. Using avoidance, revenge, and benevolence—the
three TRIMs posited by McCullough et al. (1997) as the dimen-
sions in which forgiveness occurs—we can conceptualize forbear-
ance in terms of an individual’s initial status or intercept value on
avoidance, revenge, or benevolence, with lower levels of negative
motivations (i.e., avoidance and revenge) and higher levels of
positive motivations (e.g., benevolence) indicating more forbear-
ance. Forgiveness (the type that we are calling trend forgiveness)
can be conceptualized as longitudinal change in these motivations
over time, so forgiveness can be measured as the degree of
prosocial change (i.e., reductions in avoidance and revenge, and
increases in benevolence) that occurs across a period of time. A
person who becomes less avoidant and vengeful and more benev-
olent over time (as does Alan in Figure 1) is said to have forgiven
to some degree, whereas a person who becomes more avoidant and
vengeful or less benevolent is said to have become less forgiving.
From this conceptualization, we propose that a single individual’s
instantaneous values on these transgression-related interpersonal
motivations regarding a particular transgressor correspond to the
following linear model:
y
ij
⫽

0j
⫹

1j
(Time) ⫹ r
ij
, (1)
where y
ij
is individual j’s score on a particular TRIM (e.g., avoid
-
ance, revenge, or benevolence) at Time i,

0j
is individual j’s
initial status on that particular TRIM at Time 0 (i.e., immediately
after the transgression), and

1j
(Time) is the strength of a linear
effect for time. In addition, we include a residual term r
ij
, which
represents variation in the y
ij
s that is not accounted for by initial
status or linear change. In the case of Alan and Bill as depicted in
Figure 2, the residuals r
ij
are the distances between Alan and Bill’s
instantaneous TRIM (in this case, revenge motivation) values and
the values that would be expected for each of them—as determined
by their respective linear regression lines—on the basis of their
initial status on revenge (forbearance) and the rate at which their
revenge is decreasing (trend forgiveness). These residuals lead to
a discussion of a second type of forgiveness.
Temporary Forgiveness
Person j’s residual r at a particular point in time i is the degree
to which his or her instantaneous TRIM value deviates from what
we would expect for that individual at that point in time following
the transgression, given what we know about the extent to which
that individual forbore and exhibited trend forgiveness regarding
Figure 2. Residuals r
ij
for Alan and Bill, which might be caused in part
by temporary forgiveness. Residuals r
ij
represent the distances between
Alan and Bill’s instantaneous transgression-related interpersonal motiva-
tion (in this case, revenge motivation) values and the values that would be
expected for each of them—as determined by their respective linear re-
gression lines—on the basis of their initial status on revenge (forbearance)
and the rate at which their revenge is decreasing (trend forgiveness).
542
MCCULLOUGH, FINCHAM, AND TSANG
the transgression. Clearly, it is unrealistic to imagine that a per-
son’s instantaneous TRIM scores would all fall precisely on his or
her regression line: Measurement error and occasion-specific er-
rors virtually ensure that the residuals r
ij
will differ from zero.
However, some proportion of the residual variance in people’s
instantaneous TRIM values might reflect meaningful psychologi-
cal variations in people’s motivations toward their transgressors at
particular points in time.
Consider again Alan and Bill in Figure 2. Alan’s and Bill’s
longitudinal trajectories notwithstanding, they appear to experi-
ence less revenge motivation on some days than they do on others
(i.e., they seem to become temporarily less vengeful). On those
days when Alan’s and Bill’s instantaneous TRIMs fall below their
respective regression lines, we might say that they both possess
less revenge motivation than would be expected for them, given
what we know about their forbearance and their general linear
trends toward forgiveness (which for Alan are considerable and for
Bill are negligible). In other words, on those days when Alan and
Bill are less vengeful than what we would expect on the basis of
our knowledge of their forbearance and trend forgiveness, we
might say they are less vengeful than expected or, conversely, that
they have temporarily become more forgiving. In contrast, on days
when Alan and Bill have more revenge motivation than would
be expected on the basis of their forbearance and trend forgive-
ness estimates, we might say that they have become temporarily
less forgiving. Insofar as these fluctuations of people’s instanta-
neous TRIMs around their individual regression lines are not
caused solely by error, they might also be linked to fluctuations in
other psychological variables that are theoretically related to
forgiveness.
Modeling Forbearance and Forgiveness in Random
Coefficient Growth Models
To summarize, the longitudinal model specified herein decom-
poses repeated measures of people’s TRIMs into several parame-
ters. The parameter

0j
—an individual’s initial standing on avoid
-
ance, revenge, or benevolence motivation—corresponds well to
traditional understandings of forbearance. The parameter

1j
(Time)—
an individual’s rate of linear change in interpersonal motivations
toward a transgressor—corresponds well to traditional understand-
ings of forgiveness, which we call trend forgiveness. In addition,
the residuals r
ij
of people’s TRIM values around their regression
lines (specifically, fluctuations that cause their TRIM values to be
more prosocial—i.e., less avoidant, less vengeful, and more be-
nevolent—than would be expected on the basis of their forbear-
ance and general linear trend toward forgiveness) may in part
reflect temporary forgiveness.
This model of forbearance and forgiveness is amenable to
recently developed multilevel random coefficient methods for an-
alyzing longitudinal data for patterns of temporal change (e.g.,
Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992; for a fuller examination of the advan-
tages of multilevel random coefficient models for the analysis of
longitudinal data, see Nezlek, 2001).
Transgression Severity, Empathy, and Attribution
of Responsibility
Studying forbearance and forgiveness with multilevel random
coefficient models of longitudinal change also affords new per-
spectives from which to examine the relationships of forbearance
and forgiveness with other variables of interest. In particular, these
methods might lead to new ways of understanding the relation-
ships of forbearance and forgiveness to variables such as (a)
transgression severity, (b) empathy, and (c) attributions of respon-
sibility, all of which are posited to be linked to forbearance and/or
forgiveness.
Transgression Severity
For several reasons, the severity of a transgression might influ-
ence the extent to which an individual forbears or forgives a
transgression (Boon & Sulsky, 1997; Girard & Mullet, 1997;
McCullough et al., 1998). Severe transgressions may be difficult to
forbear because they can influence the transgression recipient’s
life more profoundly and pervasively than do minor transgressions.
As a result, relatively severe transgressions may prompt people to
engage in behaviors (viz., avoiding the transgressor and seeking to
harm the transgressor in kind) that might reduce their likelihood of
incurring more such negative events in the future. Transgression
severity might also influence forgiveness. Severe transgressions
tend to have, ceteris paribus, more enduring consequences than do
less severe transgressions, whose effects may be relatively revers-
ible. When consequences of a transgression endure over time, they
are likely to serve as cues to transgression recipients that it is still
in their best interests to take self-protective stances toward the
transgressor. As a result, we expect the negative TRIMs (e.g.,
avoidance and revenge motivation) of people who incur relatively
severe transgressions to decrease more slowly and their benevo-
lence motivations to increase more slowly.
Empathy
Research on Batson’s (1990, 1991) empathy–altruism hypothe-
sis has demonstrated that empathic emotions stimulate helping
behavior and inhibit aggression. On the basis of these findings,
McCullough et al. (1997) hypothesized that empathy interferes
with the natural course of people’s motivations regarding their
transgressors. Specifically, empathy has been hypothesized to
weaken a victim’s motivations to avoid and seek revenge against
the transgressor and to foster benevolent motivations regarding the
transgressor. These motivational changes may occur because em-
pathy causes a transgression recipient to resume caring for the
transgressor on the basis of (a) the transgressor’s imagined guilt or
distress over his or her behavior, (b) the transgressor’s imagined
longing for a restored relationship, or (c) a desire to repair the
breached relationship with the transgressor. Empathy may also
cause restorations in perceived overlap between one’s own identity
and the identity of the transgressing relationship partner. This
perceived overlap between self and other might cause the victim to
view forgiveness as being in his or her own best interests as well
as in the best interests of the transgressor (see Aron, Aron, Tudor,
& Nelson, 1991; Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997;
Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996).
The empathy–forgiveness hypothesis has received some empir-
ical support. In several studies (Fincham, Paleari, & Regalia, 2002;
McCullough et al., 1997, 1998; Worthington et al., 2000), people’s
reports of the extent to which they had forgiven a specific trans-
gressor—or their instantaneous TRIM scores—were highly corre-
lated (i.e., rs ⬇ .60) with the extent to which they experienced
543
FORGIVENESS, FORBEARANCE, AND TIME
empathy for the transgressor. Empathy has also proven useful for
explaining how other social–psychological variables influence the
extent to which people forgive their transgressors. The well-known
effects of transgressors’ apologies on forgiveness (e.g., Darby &
Schlenker, 1982) appear to be mediated considerably by the effects
of the apologies on victims’ degree of empathy for the transgres-
sors (McCullough et al., 1997, 1998), and empathy has helped to
explain the efficacy of some interventions for promoting forgive-
ness in applied settings (McCullough et al., 1997; Worthington et
al., 2000). However, no research has examined empathy in the
context of a longitudinal model such as the one we propose herein.
Attribution of Responsibility
At a theoretical level, it has been argued that forgiveness and
responsibility attribution share a common feature in that both are
concerned with the link between a transgressor and the injury he or
she produces (Fincham, 2000). Accordingly, it can be hypothe-
sized that degree of responsibility or blame for a transgression
influences forgiving; all else being equal, forgiving is easier as
degree of responsibility decreases. Research supports this view,
because the willingness to forgive is negatively related to the
extent to which the transgressor is seen as responsible or blame-
worthy (Bradfield & Aquino, 1999).
Criteria for assigning responsibility therefore appear to be im-
portant for understanding forgiveness. As Heider (1958) pointed
out, responsibility rests on a number of criteria, particularly judg-
ments of intentionality and forseeability of outcomes (Fincham &
Jaspars, 1980). Again, there is some evidence that these responsi-
bility attribution criteria are related to self-reported forgiveness
(e.g., Boon & Sulsky, 1997; Shapiro, 1991). This is not to imply
that such factors have the same effects on responsibility and
forgiveness. For example, Boon and Sulsky (1997) have already
shown that, in romantic relationships, intentionality is weighted
heavily for both judgments of blame and forgiveness, whereas
avoidability of a trust violation seems relatively more important
for blame than for forgiveness.
Although the hypothesis that responsibility attributions are im-
portant determinants of forgiveness has received empirical support
in cross-sectional and experimental research (e.g., Boon & Sulsky,
1997; Bradfield & Aquino, 1999; Fincham, 2000; Shapiro, 1991;
Weiner, Graham, Peter, & Zmuidinas, 1991), no studies have yet
investigated whether attributions or responsibility are related to
forbearance, forgiveness, or both. The present studies attempt to
fill this gap.
The Present Investigation
In the present studies, we examined three issues related to the
temporal model outlined herein. First, to estimate forbearance and
trend forgiveness, we used multilevel random coefficient longitu-
dinal models to describe the trajectory of people’s TRIMs as time
passed following an interpersonal transgression. Assuming that
people do, on average, tend to forgive with time, we expected to
find evidence for linear change over time in people’s TRIMs
(specifically, reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases
in benevolence). We paid particular attention to examining
whether negative and positive TRIMs have different rates of
change over time. Second, we investigated temporary forgiveness.
Specifically, we evaluated whether people’s departures from the
TRIMs that would be expected for them at any given point in time
on the basis of their forbearance and trend forgiveness are corre-
lated with empathy and attributions of responsibility regarding the
transgressor’s actions at the same point in time (Fincham, 2000;
McCullough et al., 1997, 1998). Third, we examined whether
transgression severity as well as initial empathy and attributions of
responsibility regarding the transgressor’s actions relate to forbear-
ance, trend forgiveness, or both.
Study 1
Method
Participants
Participants were 73 students (age range ⫽ 18–25; we did not record
their gender) enrolled in introductory psychology classes at the University
at Buffalo, The State University of New York. They received a small
amount of extra credit for participating. Participants indicated having
experienced an interpersonal hurt or transgression within the prior 16
weeks (range ⫽ 1 week or less–16 weeks; M ⫽ 4.67, SD ⫽ 3.59).
Measures
TRIMs. We measured participants’ motivations to avoid and seek
revenge against their transgressors with McCullough et al.’s (1998) TRIM
Inventory. This 12-item self-report measure consists of two subscales. The
Avoidance subscale comprises 7 items that measure motivation to avoid
contact with a transgressor (e.g., “I live as if he/she doesn’t exist, isn’t
around”). The Revenge subscale comprises 5 items that measure motiva-
tion to seek revenge (e.g., “I’ll make him/her pay”). Both subscales have
high internal consistency (i.e.,
␣
ⱖ .85), moderate test–retest stability (e.g.,
8-week test–retest rs ⫽ approximately .50), and evidence of convergent
and discriminant validity (McCullough et al., 1998, 2001). Items were
rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 ⫽ strongly disagree,5⫽ strongly
agree). In addition, we measured benevolence with a new scale consisting
of 5 positively worded items (e.g., “Even though his/her actions hurt me,
I have goodwill for him/her,”“Despite what he/she did, I want us to have
a positive relationship again”) that have been used in previous research
(McCullough & Hoyt, 2002). Unlike McCullough and Hoyt, however, we
did not include an item explicitly related to forgiveness in this measure of
benevolence (see below) or an item that read, “I have given up my hurt and
resentment.” These 5 items were highly intercorrelated, with internal
consistency estimates ranging from .91 to .93. Test–retest correlations
across the five assessments ranged from .52 to .87.
For ancillary analyses, we also used a single-item measure of forgive-
ness (i.e., “I forgive him/her for what he/she did to me”), which was scored
on the same 5-point Likert-type scale. Although our confidence in this
single-item measure is quite limited for obvious psychometric reasons,
such measures are commonly used in forgiveness research, so we wished
to evaluate its adequacy for future longitudinal work.
Perceived transgression severity. To indicate how severe participants
perceived their transgressions to be, they completed a single item that read,
“How painful is the offense to you right now?” which was rated on a
7-point Likert-type scale (0 ⫽ not painful at all,6⫽ worst pain I ever felt).
Empathy for the transgressor. We measured participants’ empathy
toward their transgressors with the mean of their scores on eight emotion
words (sympathetic, empathic, concerned, moved, compassionate, warm,
softhearted, and tender) that have been used in work on empathy and
altruism (e.g., Coke, Batson, & McDavis, 1978) and forgiveness (Fincham
et al., 2002; McCullough et al., 1997, 1998). Participants rated these items
on a 6-point Likert-type scale to indicate how much they currently felt each
feeling regarding the person who hurt them (0 ⫽ not at all,5⫽ extremely).
Internal consistency reliabilities ranged from .87 to .92. Across the five
assessments, test–retest correlations ranged from .61 to .82.
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MCCULLOUGH, FINCHAM, AND TSANG