Forgiveness is a significant intervention for healing interpersonal injury. Yet therapists do not often use forgiveness intervention. Employing a semantic perspective and a survey design (n = 307), this study investigated whether the language used to rationalize forgiveness intervention (set at five levels: personal growth, relationship reconciliation, spiritual issue, others' growth, and pardoning/condoning) may affect its acceptability. Gender, problem type, and choice were also included in the analyses. Overall, forgiveness was found to be an acceptable intervention. A pardoning/condoning rationale led to significantly lower acceptability ratings. Other results are discussed. We conclude that therapists should be less apprehensive about using forgiveness, but need to inform themselves better concerning its purpose, process, and articulation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.