Why Is There a Backlash Against Forgiveness?

Well, this has been quite the summer of discontent for the psychology of forgiveness. There have now been two quite critical essays written suggesting that forgiveness is not what its advocates say it is.

The first essay was published by the New York Times in June (Caron, 2024). The second one appeared here, at Psychology Today in July (Gregory, 2024). I have already responded to the first critique here. The purpose of this post is to examine the second essay to see if it can stand up to scrutiny.

It is important to respond to these essays for this reason: People who are not deeply informed about forgiveness may simply presume that the printed word on forgiveness is correct and go away with false notions about it. If you have read either of the two essays that criticize forgiveness, I want to be sure that you see the counter-arguments against those views so that you can go more deeply into your understanding of forgiveness, especially if you ever decide to practice it or help others to do so. Let us then turn to the July critique of forgiveness.

The criticism by Gregory (2024) starts in the Key Points section with this bold claim: “There is no evidence that forgiveness causes improved physical and psychological health.” This is the gist of the essay: no one ever has shown a cause-and-effect relationship between learning to forgive and then—after the forgiveness has occurred—statistically significant improvements in either physical or psychological health. As “evidence” for this, the author states that she “spent years researching forgiveness for my book, You Don’t Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms, and I found no study that indicated forgiving will improve health or that forgiveness causes an improvement in health.” Think about that for a moment. The author says that her authoritative examination of scholarly forgiveness works turned up literally no evidence that forgiveness causes improvement in either physical or psychological health.

Shall we examine that claim by exploring two published journal articles, the abstracts of which are readily available for all at Google Scholar, showing that forgiveness causes a change in physical and psychological health? The first article discussed below centers on the improvement of cardiac functioning by men in a hospital setting following a forgiveness intervention. After that, we will examine one (of 18 possible) articles showing the same for psychological health.

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First Study: Forgiving Causes Changes in the Human Heart

The first study to be examined is by Waltman et al. (2009). This one has been around for 15 years. In this study, we worked in a cardiac unit of a hospital with male patients challenged by myocardial perfusion defects and who suffered from unresolved injustices. The patients were randomly assigned to an experimental group (sample of 9) in which they had ten weeks of group forgiveness intervention based on the process model of forgiveness (Enright, 2001) and a control group (sample of 8) in which they had heart health education as usual in this particular hospital. As the abstract states: “Patients assigned to the forgiveness group showed significantly fewer anger-recall induced myocardial perfusion defects from pre-test to the 10-week follow-up...compared to the control group.” In other words, when those who had the forgiveness intervention recalled the injustice against them, they had more blood flow through their hearts at the follow-up assessment relative to the participants in the control group. This experimental study showed a statistically significant cause of the increased blood flow, which is attributable to the process of forgiveness within the experimental group.

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Second Study: Forgiving Causes Improvement in Anger, Anxiety, and Depression for Men in Maximum-Security Corrections

Our research laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has produced many cause-and-effect studies showing, statistically, that learning to forgive causes a positive change in psychological health. See, for example, Enright (2018), in which 18 randomized experimental and control group studies are discussed, that consistently show forgiveness interventions causing changes in psychological health. Let us focus on only one of these cause-and-effect studies.

Psychologically compromised men in a maximum-security correctional institution (Yu et al., 2021) were randomly assigned to either a forgiveness group or a control group (sample size of 9 in each group at the end of the study). The control group used the standard treatment manual chosen by this particular department of corrections. After six months of therapy, once a week in a group format, the experimental group decreased statistically significantly in anger, anxiety, and depression (from clinical levels to normal levels) compared to the control group, which showed little change. Once the control group then had the forgiveness intervention, those participants, too, reduced to normal levels of anger, anxiety, and depression. The results held for the original experimental group six months after the forgiveness treatment ended.

What the Study by Lee and Enright (2019) Actually Says

As a further criticism of forgiveness, Gregory cites only a meta-analysis by Lee and Enright (2019) showing a relationship (not a cause-and-effect result) between forgiveness and physical health. The findings from the abstract state this: "A hundred and twenty-eight studies (N=58,531) were retrieved, in which the mean effect sizes showed a significant positive relationship between forgiveness of others and PH [physical health]." If our intent had been to claim causality based on the findings, the critique would be important and accurate. Yet, near the end of the article, we state, "...the finding that the relation between forgiveness of others and PH are correlational does not support a causal inference regarding whether forgiveness of others influences PH or vice versa." The call was for more forgiveness interventions in the context of physical health, as already have been done in the cardiac study above and in Lee and Enright (2014) with women who have fibromyalgia.

Has Anyone Said Forgiveness Is a "Panacea"?

Gregory further criticizes the field of forgiveness because people supposedly see forgiveness as a “panacea.” A panacea is a remedy for all ills, a cure-all. If I looked for years, I doubt I would ever see the word “panacea” connected to any researchers or mental health professionals who incorporate forgiveness into their work. Such a word, then, is rhetoric with no basis in reality. Writings are clear that forgiveness is a choice that should never be forced on anyone (Enright, 2019).

Forgiveness Essential Reads

Toxic Forgiveness: Why 'Forgive and Forget' Doesn't Really Work

Mistaking Forgiveness for Reconciliation Can Be Dangerous

In conclusion, do not believe everything you read with the word “forgiveness” in it. The summer of 2024 produced a false backlash that could lead both clients and mental health professionals astray.