Record Detail

With the development of the theory of positivepsychology, forgiveness has been understood to constitutea psychological strength that may facilitate personal andrelational health. This study involved two brief (four ses-sions) forgiveness education programmes based on theEnright Psycho-social Model and Chinese cultural values,respectively, to examine the effectiveness of the forgive-ness programmes among Chinese college students.Twenty-four participants who attended three or more ses-sions formed the participants, and their data were used fordata analysis. All of the participants were aged from 18 to21 years. The effect of the two programmes on the par-ticipants’ decision and emotion to forgive and empathytoward the offenders were measured by the decisionalforgiveness scale, emotional forgiveness scale, Batson’sempathy adjectives, one-item forgiveness scale, and one-item relationship scale. The effect of the programmes onparticipants’ psychological well-being was measured bythe satisfaction with life scale. Qualitative feedbackregarding the programme was collected from open ques-tions in the post-test. The results suggested that both groupschanged at almost the same rate on the variables, while theChinese Value-oriented group had a slightly stronger effectin decreasing negative decisional forgiveness and negativeemotional forgiveness. The analysis of the pretest and post-test scores indicated that both the Enright Psycho-socialProgramme and the Chinese Value-oriented Programmehad positive effects on improving participants’ generalemotional forgiveness, decreasing their negative emotionstoward the offender, and improving life satisfaction. Thesefindings need to be interpreted with caution, however, dueto the small sample size involved. Further study may alsoconsider integrating the two types of forgiveness educationprogrammes and adopting an experiential approach with alonger duration.