This study examines the intra- and inter-personal processes through which married couples achieve forgiveness and reconciliation. In phase one of the study, in-depth interviews were conducted. Six couples from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong were interviewed to identify the steps taken by both parties that allowed them to achieve forgiveness and reconciliation after hurtful events in their marriages. The steps taken by the injured parties in such situations include acknowledging pain, letting go of grudges, viewing the offending party differently and reestablishing trust; in turn, the injurer accepts responsibility for his or her wrongdoing, expresses remorse, resolves his or her inner struggles and receives trust in his or her integrity. The results demonstrate that balance is of paramount importance in relationships. Although the injured party needs to regain his or her sense of justice, the dignity of the injurer must also be protected. In addition, because both parties may have acted wrongfully, the roles of the injured and the injurer may become reversed during the reconciliation process. Finally, when reconciliation is achieved through forgiveness and the redevelopment of trust, identity reconstruction occurs. The implications of these findings for marital counseling are presented. In phase two of the study, two major scales, the Transgression-related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory and the Relationship Trust Scale, were validated using questionnaires completed by 665 married individuals. Both of the scales exhibit excellent internal reliability and demonstrate construct validity. The validation process revealed that the perfectionist tendencies of Chinese married couples may lead them not to want to “bury” their resentment to advance the relationship. Instead, Chinese couples may prefer harmonious relationships without any negative sentiment. Practitioner research was employed in the final phase of the study. Ten couples received counseling from the researcher, who was also a clinician, after experiencing transgressions in their marriages. As measured using the validated scales, the couples had improved significantly by the end of the counseling process; the impact of the hurtful event had decreased; and forgiveness, trust and dyadic adjustment had increased. The wives also exhibited significant improvement in terms of their marital satisfaction levels, although the husbands did not. Based on the clinical data, the researcher developed a five-phase intervention model that helps married couples to forgive and reconcile. In this model, the first phase involves engaging the couples. For the parties involved to be able to move on with the counseling process, the conflict between the spouses needs to be de-escalated. The second phase involves addressing the injustice gap and the hurt feelings of the injured party via dialogue between the spouses. When forgiveness is granted during the third phase, an identity reconstruction process ensues. The fourth phase involves rebuilding the emotional bond between the spouses and their sense of trust, and in the final phase, the couple consolidates the change. In addition, the effort to connect the couples to their ancestral, cultural and spiritual resources is an essential intervention strategy; as such resources can sustain the couples during this arduous journey. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Although its consequences can be devastating, revenge is surprisingly understudied. In this dissertation, I address several key questions. For example, are the factors that trigger revenge the same across different individuals? What are the psychological processes that facilitate revenge? Does revenge have any adaptive value? These issues were addressed with a series of three studies. Study 1 explored whether personality predictors of self-reported revenge generalize across four specific transgressions. Results indicated that narcissists were only vengeful after social rejection whereas psychopaths and neurotics tended to be vengeful across transgressions. Study 2 expanded on these results by exploring trait-level vengeful fantasies and vengeful behaviors and the impact of a potential mediator, namely, anger rumination. Neuroticism was shown to be predictive of vengeful fantasies: This association was entirely mediated by anger rumination. Psychopathy predicted vengeful behavior: This association was partially mediated by vengeful fantasies. Study 3 involved the analysis of participants' personal anecdotes about how they reacted to transgressions against them. Coded variables included revenge as well as 10 other coping behaviors: These 11 predictors were then evaluated with respect to their impact on both immediate relief and long-term recovery. Although the revenge option fostered immediate relief, it did not benefit long-term recovery. Only one coping behavior (meaning-making) actually fostered recovery. The contributions and limitations of this research plus suggestions for future studies are discussed.

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Research has shown that forgiveness promotes individual psychological well-being as well as positive relationship functioning. Moreover, couples themselves report that forgiving is one of the most important reasons that their relationships stand the test of time (Fenell,1993). However, the partner behaviours that facilitate, or even thwart, forgiveness in romantic relationships have been the subject of limited empirical research. In the current study, I investigated the effects of two sets of partner behaviour—offers of amends and expressions of responsiveness (i.e. understanding, validation, care)—on forgiveness for real-life hurtful events in romantic relationships. Sixty-four couples participated in a lab-based, experimental study in which I manipulated whether the partner who disclosed feelings about an unresolved, hurtful event (“victim”) received a videotaped response from his/her partner in which this partner (“offender”) expressed: 1) responsiveness only, 2) amends only, 3) both responsiveness and amends, or 4) neither responsiveness nor amends (control group). Trained coders provided micro-ratings of offenders’ specific responsive (e.g., perspective-taking) and amends (e.g., apology) behaviour as well as macro-ratings of more global displays of these behaviours (e.g., overall understanding, overall remorse). Victims also completed measures of relationship satisfaction, event severity, perceptions of their partners’ amends, perceptions of their partners’ responsiveness, and forgiveness. The findings suggest that event severity moderates the effectiveness of the general act of offering amends and/or responsiveness in promoting forgiveness. When event severity was high, the experimental manipulation of the presence vs. absence of amends and of responsiveness did not affect forgiveness. However, it did affect forgiveness for less severe events. Specifically, expressions of amends, responsiveness and their combination yielded similarly more forgiveness than no response at all. These effects were iv mediated by the victim’s perceptions of the offender’s responsiveness to his/her experience of the hurtful event. Further, results indicated that the victims’ perceptions of the offenders’ responsiveness could be promoted, or thwarted, by the content of the offenders’ amends. Micro-ratings of offenders’ amends behaviour demonstrated that when event severity is low, more elaborate offers of amends, in particular remorse, increase the victims’ perceptions of partner responsiveness, which in turn, facilitate forgiveness. To the contrary, when event severity is high, offering more elaborate offers of amends has no effect at all in facilitating victims’ perceptions of responsiveness, and expressing more remorse in particular, may backfire. Finally, the associations between coders’ ratings of the offenders’ behaviour with the victims’ perceptions suggested that the victims’ perceptions, especially of responsive behaviour, are perhaps largely self-construed.

Thesis (M.A.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1989. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-57).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-178).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-127).

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 82 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-62).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-124).