| This study aimed to assess two questions: (1) how important is social cognition in the forgiveness process, and (2) can a psychological education program be designed to promote social-cognitive development and forgiveness? Theory indicates that advanced social cognitive skills may assist an offended person in forgiving his/her offender. As the injured party comes to a more comprehensive understanding of the offender and the offense, empathy, compassion, and ultimately forgiveness may be fostered. Adolescents in particular are at a tenuous stage of social-cognitive development, as they are developing adult-like social-cognitive skills but may not be adept at (or even inclined toward) using them. This may be particularly true in the domain of romantic relationships, where emotions run high and expectations and norms are still unclear.An eight-session psychology curriculum, incorporating traditional psychological theory and more recent work on forgiveness, was designed and implemented with juniors and seniors in a local high school. However, forgiveness was not explicitly discussed instead students were challenged to learn and apply psychological ideas to the hurtful situation they experienced. The experimental group increased more than the no-contact control group in overall social-cognitive complexity (a composite score of cognitive complexity relative to self, the offender, and the hurtful situation), but no group differences were found in depression, hope, anger, or forgiveness. Correlational evidence suggests, however, that social cognition and forgiveness are linked: those who demonstrated moderate-to-high increases in social-cognitive complexity between pre-test and post-test showed significantly greater forgiveness responses at post-test and follow-up. Further correlational evidence suggests that, in particular, the complexity of one's attributions about the offender may be the key to the link between social cognition and forgiveness.Further interventions of this sort that (1) implement a modified curriculum in an ecologically-valid setting, (2) involve participants that are experiencing profound emotional suffering, and (3) utilize more sensitive measures of mental health should meet with even more success. |
