"These researchers explored the influence of forgiveness on the memories of victims and perpetrators of a wrong. In particular, they explored whether forgiveness affects people's ability to remember the details of past events, whether they can remember the emotions they experienced in that past event, and also whether that memory still elicits an emotion. Across several studies, participants were given a prompt to remember a past event."
"Participants were asked to recall an event from the previous 10 years in which they were the victim of wrongdoing. One study asked a group to remember an event in which they were the perpetrator of a wrongdoing. Half of the people in the victim (or perpetrator) groups were asked to remember an event in which they forgave the perpetrator (or were forgiven)."
"It is a fact of life that people do wrong to others. People may harm a person they know, or they may harm a stranger. Those harms take many forms, including physical, emotional, social, and financial wrongs. As part of this process, the victims of wrongdoing may also choose to forgive the perpetrator. What exactly is the benefit of this forgiveness?"
People recalled past wrongdoings from the prior ten years, either as victims or, in one study, as perpetrators. Participants were prompted to remember events in which forgiveness occurred or did not occur. Memory for event details and memory for the emotions experienced were measured separately from the emotional response elicited by the memory. Forgiveness primarily reduced the intensity of emotion elicited when remembering the event. Memory accuracy for factual details and for which emotions occurred remained largely unchanged by forgiveness. The pattern of effects was similar for both victims and perpetrators.
Read at Psychology Today
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