Subjective and Psychological Well-Being as Related to Dispositional and Motivational Forgiveness among Adolescents

Helping young people avoid and overcome emotional problems in the wake of violence is one of the most important challenges for psychologists and social scientists. Moreover, promoting healthy development is as important as preventing problems and serves the same end more effectively. Forgiveness has a crucial role in attaining health and overall development, as it is an important healing mechanism which helps an individual to cope with guilt, injustice, grief and loss; supports to re energize hearts and rebuilds life because revenge from self or others is not the permanent answer. Forgiveness can be understood as a response, as a personality disposition, and as a characteristic of social units, at the level of the psychological functioning of a transgression recipient. Specifically, forgiveness as a response can be defined as a suite of transgression related motivational changes toward a transgressor in which revenge and avoidance related motivations subside, and motivations toward benevolence or goodwill increase or re-emerge. As a personality disposition, forgiveness reflects a trait-like tendency to forgive other across a variety of interpersonal transgressions. Review of literature indicates that Forgiveness has a lot of positive implications for health and wellbeing. Although Forgiveness has been fairly addressed in West, very little work has been done on Indian population. Therefore the present study aims at understanding the subjective and psychological wellbeing in relation to dispositional and motivational forgiveness among adolescents. Transgression Related Interpersonal Motivation Scale (TRIM_12) by Mc Cullough (1998), Heartland Forgiveness Scale by Thompson and Snyder (2003), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-X) by Watson and Clark (1994), Satisfaction with Life Scale by Diener et al. (1985) and Psychological Well Being Scale by Ryff and Keyes (1995) were used. The sample consisted of 100 adolescents (50 males and 50 females) in the age range of l8-24 years. Correlational analyses were used to analyze the data. Results indicated positive correlations between the dimensions of Forgiveness and wellbeing.