RESUMO
Research on forgiveness suggests that forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping process important for clinical settings as it can promote both physical and mental health (Worthington et al., 2005; Witvliet and McCullough, 2007). Investigating antecedents of forgiveness, empirical studies and theoretical models propose that attributions influence forgiveness. However, hardly any studies or theoretical models have ever looked at the possibility that this relationship may be reciprocal in nature and whether forgiveness also impacts a victim's attributions has not been investigated. The present, highly powered (n = 969) study seeks to fill this gap and provides the first empirical support that emotional forgiveness has a strong influence on subsequent attributions. Specifically, individuals, who have emotionally forgiven a transgression, hold the transgressor less responsible for the offense compared to those in the decisional forgiveness and control condition. Moreover, the findings conceptually replicate previous research (Lichtenfeld et al., 2015) by demonstrating that emotional, but not decisional forgiveness affects cognition and, thus, emotional and decisional forgiveness should be treated as distinct facets in the forgiveness process. Implications of these results for clinical and health psychology are discussed.
RESUMO
To forgive and forget is a well-known idiom, which has rarely been looked at empirically. In the current experiment, we investigated differences between emotional and decisional forgiveness on forgetting. The present study provides the first empirical support that emotional forgiveness has a strong influence on subsequent incidental forgetting. Specifically, our results demonstrate that emotional forgiveness leads to substantially higher levels of forgetting in respect to offense relevant traits compared to both decisional forgiveness and no forgiveness. This provides evidence for our hypothesized effect that only individuals who have emotionally forgiven a transgression, and not those who just decided to forgive, subsequently forget offense relevant traits attributed to the transgressor.
Assuntos
Conflito Psicológico , Emoções , Perdão , Relações Interpessoais , Memória , Tomada de Decisões , Feminino , Humanos , Estudantes , Adulto JovemRESUMO
BACKGROUND: In our environment, care of the dependent elderly is usually provided by family members, thereby ensuring autonomy and avoiding institutionalization of the dependent adult. Thirty-three percent of Spanish caregivers have acknowledged the importance of acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary for daily care. Consequently, several interventions have been developed by health professionals from distinct disciplines. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to systematically review and evaluate the efficacy of published interventions for the caregivers of dependent elderly individuals. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of the literature on interventions in the caregivers of the dependent elderly (older than 65 years old) published between 1996 and 2006. The inclusion criteria included controlled clinical trials with outcome measures related to effectiveness in reducing caregiver burden, anxiety and depression. Our search yielded 15 reports. RESULTS: The interventions produced statistically significant reductions in burden (40%), anxiety (50%) and depression (90%). Interventions requiring active participation by caregivers and those based on cognitive-behavioral therapy were more effective than those focused on knowledge acquisition. CONCLUSION: Due to the heterogeneity of caregiving interventions, evaluation of both the clinical and statistical significance of these interventions is essential. Reducing the chronic stress experienced by caregivers is difficult to achieve. Consequently, future experimental designs should take into account the needs reported by caregivers as well as promote active participation.
