Forgive and Forget?

Patients often wish they could forget troubling trauma-related recollections, and the act of forgiving has been found to assist trauma-focused psychotherapies. Now, investigators looked at the truth of the age-old adage “forgive and forget” in laboratory procedures involving imagined offenses.

First, 30 nondepressed university students (25 women) were assessed for their tendencies to be forgiving and were then exposed to 40 scenarios that involved being wronged (e.g., infidelity, slander, theft) by a close friend, relative, colleague, or supervisor. Subjects rated each offense for seriousness and for their own likelihood of forgiving the offender. From these, 12 forgiven and 12 unforgiven scenarios were selected for each subject. In a second…