The Investigation of University Students' Forgiveness Levels in Terms of Self-compassion, Rumination and Personality Traits

Abstract

The aim of the study is to investigate forgiveness levels of university students in terms of self-compassion, rumination and personality traits. A descriptive-correlational was used and self-administered questionnaires were conducted in this study. Participants of the study were 840 university students (460 females, 380 males) from different faculties of Pamukkale University chosen by random cluster sampling method. In this study, forgiveness was measured with Heartland Forgiveness Scale; self-compassion was measured with Self-compassion Scale; rumination was measured with Rumination about an Interpersonal Offense Scale, and personality traits were measured with Adjective Based Personality Scale. To examine the predictive power of self-compassion, rumination and personality traits on forgiveness, hierarchical regression analysis was used. According to the results of the study, among university students, self-compassion and extraversion are both significant predictors of self-forgiveness. And also, both of them predict self-forgiveness positively. However, rumination, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness of personality traits do not predict self-forgiveness. Also according to results, among university students, self-compassion, rumination and extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness are significant predictors of forgiveness of others. While self-compassion, extraversion and agreeableness predict forgiveness of others positively, rumination and conscientiousness predict negatively. Implications of these findings are discussed within the context of literature.