Forgiveness and late life functioning: the mediating role of finding ego-integrity

ABSTRACT

Objectives: This study seeks (1) to replicate previous findings on the mediating effect of integrity/despair in the relation between forgiveness and depression in an elderly population and (2) to extend these findings to other aspects of functioning, namely life satisfaction and subjective health. Both aims were studied in a sample of residential elderly.

Methods: Residential elderly (n = 329, M = 87 years) filled out questionnaires on forgivingness, depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, subjective health and the developmental task of integrity/despair. Structural equation modeling was used to test the mediational role of integrity-despair in the relation between forgivingness and the aspects of functioning. Direct and indirect effects are tested.

Results: The results confirmed earlier findings stating that forgivingness and depression are negatively associated in residential elderly and that the developmental task of finding integrity and avoiding despair is significant mediator in this relationship. A similar pattern of mediational associations was found for life satisfaction. However, for subjective health only a direct effect between forgiveness and subjective health was found, whereas the developmental task of integrity and despair did not function as an underlying mechanism.

Discussion: Framed within a life span perspective, we showed that the developmental task of finding a balance between integrity and despair is an important intrapersonal mechanism through which forgivingness is related with depressed feelings and life satisfaction for residential elderly. A different mechanism might explain the direct effect between forgiveness and subjective health.

KEYWORDS:

• Forgiveness
• late life functioning
• integrity-despair

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Freya Engels, Denise Kuppens, Marjolein Stevens, Isabelle Swerts and Kimberley Bruggeman for their assistance in the data collection. We would like to thank the Flemish elderly care-and-nurse units for their collaboration in this study.

Disclosure of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the KU Leuven [grant number StG/15/004BF].