A Meta-Analysis of Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity as Predictors of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Forgiveness

Abstract

Forgiveness is a nebulous construct. There are many ways to define forgiveness, and as many ways to measure it. The two predominant ways to measure forgiveness are with relationship-focused measures (Interpersonal) and self-focused measures (Intrapersonal). With inconsistencies in predictor outcomes of forgiveness reported in forgiveness literature, this meta-analysis aimed to investigate whether the type of forgiveness measure used impacted upon these inconsistencies. To explore this issue, the current study meta-analysed results from 96 independent studies, exploring the correlations between Intrapersonal and Interpersonal forgiveness measures with two established predictors of forgiveness: Relationship Quality and Transgression Severity, to determine whether these predictor outcomes differed based on the type of measure used. The study hypothesised that Interpersonal measures would exhibit larger correlations between forgiveness and Relationship Quality and smaller correlations with Transgressions Severity, in comparison to Intrapersonal measures. Additionally, key study characteristics including the study design, transgression methodology and predictor measurement, were explored. Results demonstrated that contrary to expectations, Intrapersonal and Interpersonal measures reported similar effects on both predictors; with medium, positive correlations for Relationship Quality (r = .42, r = .38, respectively) and small negative correlations for Transgression Severity (r = -.26, r = -.23, respectively). These findings suggest that Intrapersonal and Interpersonal measures are consistently measuring forgiveness. However, additional exploratory analyses run on common Intrapersonal and Interpersonal measures showed discrepancy in predictor outcomes among the measure types. Thus, future research should investigate additional forgiveness predictors such as intent and apology, to shed more understandings into this matter.