Cognitive and emotional predictors of episodic and dispositional forgiveness

Abstract

The study examined the importance of cognitive (positive orientation, basic hope) and emotional (positive and negative affectivity, emotional control) variables for state and trait forgiveness. One hundred and thirty nine participants completed six inventories in Polish version: HFS (Thompson et al., 2005), TRIM (McCullough et al., 1998), P-Scale (Caprara et al., 2012), BHI-12 (Trzebiński & Ziȩba, 2003a), SUPIN (Polish version of PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), CECS (Watson & Greer, 1983). Results showed that dispositional forgiveness (general and positive) was associated with cognitive and emotional predictors, whereas episodic forgiveness primarily with certain emotional variables. In addition, the results indicated that emotional predictors merely participate in the process of reducing unforgiveness, whereas cognitive and emotional variables were shown to be necessary for full forgiveness.