Willingness to forgive: relationships with mood, anxiety and severity of symptoms

Abstract

The Willingness to Forgive Scale (WFS) was correlated with the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Global Severity Index (GSI) of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Participants were 45 male and 55 female outpatients being treated for affective and anxiety disorders. No gender differences (α = 0.05) were found on the aforementioned instruments. In the females, the WFS was not correlated with any of the three scales. In the males, the WFS was significantly correlated (r = −0.38, p = 0.009) with the BAI scores, marginally correlated (r = −0.29, p = 0.052) with the GSI, but not correlated with the BDI-II scores. That anxiety and symptom severity were related to willingness to forgive in males, but not in females, is a finding difficult to explain but worth exploring in future research.

Acknowledgement

Thanks are due to Mamata Chinta for her editorial assistance and to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of the paper.