Forgiveness: what it is, what it is not, and what a grudge costs you

Someone said something cruel at a family dinner two years ago. You still replay it, sometimes word for word, usually at night. The other person has probably forgotten. You have not, and each replay brings back some of the anger.

What forgiveness means in psychology

In 1998 Michael McCullough and colleagues described forgiveness as a change in motivation toward the person who hurt you: less wish to avoid them and less wish to get even. That definition leaves out several things people often confuse with forgiving. Forgiving does not mean excusing the act, forgetting it or deciding that it did not matter. It also does not require making up. You can forgive someone and still keep your distance, which is often the sensible choice when the person is still harmful.

Self, others and situations

In 2005 Laura Yamhure Thompson, C. R. Snyder and colleagues published the Heartland Forgiveness Scale. It treats forgiveness as a disposition, a general tendency, and divides it into three areas: forgiving yourself, forgiving other people, and making peace with situations nobody controls, such as illness or bad luck.

Our forgiveness test borrows that three-part idea, but the 12 statements are ours, written for this site, so it is a self-reflection tool rather than a validated questionnaire. It gives one overall score. The statements cover all three areas, for example "With time, I can forgive myself for the mistakes I have made", "I hold grudges for a long time against people who have hurt me" and "When life is unfair, I eventually make peace with what I cannot change". You answer on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Five statements describe the opposite of forgiving, and agreeing with those lowers your score.

What a grudge does

In 2001 Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet and colleagues asked people to think of someone who had hurt them. Then they asked them to imagine either rehearsing the hurt and nursing a grudge, or responding with empathy and forgiveness. While people pictured the grudge, their heart rate, blood pressure and facial muscle tension rose, and they reported more negative feelings. During the forgiving imagery the readings were calmer.

The study measured short moments in a lab, not long-term health. What it does show is that replaying a hurt has a physical cost while you are doing it. One of the statements in our test asks about exactly this: "I keep replaying situations in which I was treated badly".

When forgiving can backfire

A higher score is not always better. In 2011 James McNulty followed newlywed couples over several years. When one spouse tended to forgive easily, the other spouse's psychological and physical aggression tended to continue rather than decline. Forgiving without any consequence can tell the other person that the behaviour is acceptable.

So a high score says you let go of hurts easily. Whether that serves you depends on who you are forgiving and what they do next. Forgiving never has to mean staying in a harmful situation, and if you are in one, a psychologist or a trusted person can help you think it through.

If the statements about yourself pulled your score down, the self-compassion test and the post on the three pillars of self-compassion look at that side. If anger is what stays with you after a conflict, try the anger management test.