Forgive and Remember: The Relationship between Religion and the Recollection of Transgressions

Abstract

Although world religions extol the virtue of forgiveness, psychological research has uncovered a religion-forgiveness discrepancy in which individual differences in religiousness are positively related to valuing forgiveness, but less strongly related to forgiveness on transgression-specific, state forgiveness measures. The current study examines the relationship between trait religiousness and trait versus state forgiveness, and compares these with the effects of a religious prime on state forgiveness. 365 undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to a religious or neutral prime, and wrote about a transgression. Consistent with the religion-forgiveness discrepancy, we found that individual differences in religiousness were related more strongly to dispositional forgiveness than to transgression-specific forgiveness, although there were significant relationships to both. The religious prime had no noticeable effect on state forgiveness. Results are consistent with the religion-forgiveness discrepancy.