Effectiveness of forgiveness education with adolescents in Iran: Increasing the positive psychology of empathy, altruism, and willingness to forgive

ABSTRACT

The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of forgiveness education on positive psychology variables (empathy, altruism and willingness to forgive) in Iranian adolescents. Two hundred twenty-four (Persian, Azeri, and Kurdish) male and female students in eighth grade participated. Schools were randomly assigned to experimental (N=123) and control (N=101) groups. Measures include the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire, Altruistic Personality Scale, and Willingness to Forgive Scale, administered at pre-test, post-test, and follow-up. The experimental group was presented with 15 weekly sessions of teaching forgiveness programs by classroom teachers. The results showed that the experimental group improved more in degrees of empathy, altruism, and willingness to forgive compared to the control group, and also at follow-up. It seems that forgiveness education programs can contribute to human flourishing with the increase of positive psychology in students, particularly in empathy, altruism, and willingness to forgive.

KEYWORDS:

• Forgiveness education
• empathy
• altruism
• adolescents
• forgiveness

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all of the teachers for their dedication in implementing this intervention in Iran. Data are available from the first author upon reasonable request. The analytic code and materials also are available from the first author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bagher Ghobari Bonab

Bagher Ghobari Bonab is a Professor of Psychology of Exceptional Children at the University of Tehran. He holds a license to practice from the Psychology and Counselling Organization, Islamic Republic of Iran. He was given a Distinguished Instructor Award at his university. Dr. Ghobari is one of the pioneers in developing and using a model to integrate spirituality in psychotherapy to enhance effectiveness of treatment protocols. He has been ranked as one of the outstanding publishers in the field of humanities in Iran and the Islamic world by ISC in 2016 and 2023.

Mohamad Khodayarifard

Mohammad Khodayarifard is a Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the University of Tehran. His main research interests focus on psychology of religion, positive psychology, psychotherapy, and international interdisciplinary research. He served also as the Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Education from 2016 to 2018. He has authored 19 books.

Ramin Hashemi Geshnigani

Ramin Hashemi Gheshnigani holds a MA in Counseling Psychology. He has been helping Dr. Ghobari as a Research Assistant for more than 6 years. He has conducted workshops in foster care attachment for individuals deprived from having appropriate parenting figures.

Behnaz Khoei

Behnaz A. Khoei currently teaches at the University of Notre Dame in Australia. She also holds position at the University of New Castle as an ELicos teacher. She is author of “The Emptiest Arms,” a poignant love story.

Fatimah Nosrati

Fatimah Nosrati is an Associated Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the University of Tehran. Her main research interests focus on psychology of religion, spirituality, educational methods, and international interdisciplinary research. She served as the Dean of the office of Alumni of University of Tehran from 2020 to 2022. She has authored 11 books.

Jacqueline Y. Song

Jacqueline Song is the program director of the International Forgiveness Institute in the United States. She currently is a doctoral student at the University of Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid, Spain. She is the author of 20 publications centered on the measurements of forgiveness, Forgiveness Therapy, and forgiveness education. Her research focus is on forgiveness interventions in correctional institutions, people without homes, and road rage issues.

Robert D. Enright

Robert Enright holds the Aristotelian Professorship in Forgiveness Science within the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a founding board member of the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin in the United States. His colleagues and he were the first to publish an empirically-based article on person-to-person forgiveness in 1989.