Sex, Forgiveness, and Health

Abstract

Two previous meta-analyses have addressed sex differences in forgiveness. Miller, Worthington, and McDaniel (2008) analyzed 70 research studies and found that, compared to males, females were slightly more forgiving and much less vengeful (d=.S3). However, Fehr, Gelfand, and Nag (2010), as one part of a larger meta-analytic project, analyzed 53 research studies regarding sex and forgiveness and found no difference. The discrepancy between these two meta-analyses is likely due to methodology such as different inclusion criteria for studies, different ways of handling non-significant sex findings, and whether missing statistics were imputed or not. For example. Miller et al. scoured method sections of articles that did not study sex differences as a focal variable; Fehr et al. tended to include a broad sample of forgiveness studies but only coded those for sex differences when sex was listed in title or abstract. This can be seen in the scope of the studies. Miller coded 33 % more studies than did Fehr et al, in spite of being published two years earlier. In the present review, we have included five studies on sex and forgiveness that have occurred since Fehr et al. When Fehr et al. and Miller et al. differed in their findings, and when there were not relevant and more recent articles, we tended to give more weight to Miller et al. because they had higher statistical power to detect differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)