Role of Supportive Others in the Forgiveness Process

Forgiveness research is a focus of interpersonal relationships in counseling. This phenomenological study investigated the role of an individual's support systems in forgiveness. The research design included semistructured interviews with 11 participants. Key findings revealed that participants primarily forgave for peace of mind. Several resources used by participants were helpful in forgiveness, but use of friends, family, and therapists showed mixed results. In addition, participants wanted support systems to listen and not to give advice, and support persons need to be objective or be trained in forgiveness therapy. Recommendations for counselors who work with people struggling to forgive are provided.     

Spirituality Predicts Health and Cardiovascular Responses to Stress in Young Adult Women

The primary focus of this study was to investigate the roles of spirituality and religiosity in self-reported physical health, and to determine whether there is an association between an individuals spirituality and cardiovascular responses to two stressors. Fifty-two females participated in both a betrayal interview and a structured interview, during which blood pressure and heart rate were monitored. Spirituality, as assessed by the Spiritual Well-being Scale, was associated with perceived stress, subjective well-being, and medication use. The Existential Well-being subscale predicted fewer physical health symptoms and was associated with lower mean heart rate and decreased heart rate reactivity. The Religious Well-being subscale was associated with reduced systolic blood pressure reactivity in response to the structured interview. These findings suggest that spirituality may have a salutary effect on health, even in a fairly young sample. While previous studies have predominantly reported that religion, as well as spirituality, have a health protective effect, this study did not find strong support for that conclusion. Religiosity in this age group may still be undergoing developmental maturity, which may explain the lack of relationships to health.     

Identifying careless responses in questionnaire research: a serendipitous finding

The present study describes a possible method by which potentially meaningless responses to questionnaires can be easily identified. Given an inadvertent mistake in the design of a questionnaire packet, we found that 10% of respondents provided invalid responses to items.     

The Role of Adult Attachment Style in Forgiveness Following an Interpersonal Offense

The role of attachment style in relation to forgiveness was investigated in 2 betrayal interviews. Blood pressure and heart rate were assessed, along with attachment style, forgiveness, empathy, and emotional expressiveness. Securely attached individuals were more forgiving of the specific offense, had higher levels of trait forgiveness, and expressed more positive emotion. Securely attached adults had lower interview systolic blood pressure and exhibited greater blood pressure recovery. Attachment style may be an independent antecedent of forgiveness.