Associations Between Women’s Experiences of Sexual Violence and Forgiveness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine forgiveness and sexual violence among college women. Undergraduate women (N = 503) completed an online survey assessing experiences of sexual violence and forgiveness. Simultaneous multivariate regressions revealed that experiencing more sexual violence was associated with more revenge and avoidance, and less benevolence. Furthermore, findings indicated that more experiences of sexual violence were negatively associated with forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, and forgiveness of uncontrollable situations. This work begins to fill critical gaps in the extant literature because it is the only study to date that examines sexual violence and the positive psychological construct of forgiveness. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Negative Interpersonal Interactions and Dating Abuse Perpetration: The Mediating Role of Dispositional Forgivingness

“…As the majority of studies linking forgivingness and dating abuse have examined primarily female samples (Davidson et al, 2013, 2015; Rivera & Fincham, 2015), we first examined all study variables by sex. Descriptive statistics and t tests examining mean differences among study variables by sex are presented in Table 1.…”

“…In studies of undergraduate women conducted by Davidson et al (2013, 2015), the total frequency of dating abuse was inversely associated with dispositional forgivingness of others and oneself. Women who were victimized reported being significantly less forgiving of others as well as themselves relative to controls that had not experienced dating abuse (Davidson et al, 2015).…”

“…This model suggests that if an individual has impelling risk factors (e.g., witnessing violence between early caregivers, poor communication with romantic partners) and experiences weak inhibiting forces (e.g., deficits of empathy), the risk of perpetrating abuse increases. From this theoretical framework and empirical evidence (Davidson et al, 2013, 2015; Rivera & Fincham, 2015), we posit that negative interpersonal interactions (i.e., impelling risk factors) will be associated with increased dating abuse perpetration, and dispositional forgivingness will mediate the association to the extent that forgivingness enhances experiences of empathy and other “inhibiting forces.”…”

“…For example, individuals who report more negative interactions with parents or romantic partners are more likely to be involved in violent dating behaviors (Johnson, Manning, Giordano, & Longmore, 2015; Linder & Collins, 2005; Viejo, Monks, Sanchez, & Ortega-Ruiz, 2016). Three recent studies also have illustrated that forgivingness is negatively associated with dating abuse among young adults (Davidson, Lozano, Cole, & Gervais, 2013, 2015; Rivera & Fincham, 2015). Rivera and Fincham (2015) found that the tendency to forgive parents mediated relations between witnessing parental abuse and dating abuse, highlighting that forgiveness might be an important mechanism to consider in reducing dating abuse.…”

Women's Contexts and Circumstances of Posttraumatic Growth After Sexual Victimization: A Systematic Review

“…The sample sizes of studies ranged from 2 to 39,703 with 19 (48.8%) studies having used qualitative, 19 (46.3%) quantitative, and 3 (7.3%) mixed-methods. The vast majority (63.4%) of studies were conducted in the USA (Cole and Lynn, 2010;Singh et al, 2010;Drauker et al, 2011;Warner Stidham et al, 2012;Williams and Nelson-Gardell, 2012;Wilson et al, 2012;Arias and Johnson, 2013;Davidson et al, 2013;McClain and Frederick Amar, 2013;Foster and Hagedorn, 2014;Ullman, 2014;Bryant-Davis et al, 2015;Kelley and Gidycz, 2015;Simon et al, 2015;Crews et al, 2016;Hartley et al, 2016;Hitter et al, 2017;Kerlin and Sosin, 2017;Smigelsky et al, 2017;Barnett and Maciel, 2019;Catabay et al, 2019;Kirkner and Ullman, 2019;Lahav et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2019;Saint Arnault and Sinko, 2019;Strauss Swanson and Szymanski, 2020) followed by European studies with 9.8% (Phanichrat and Townshend, 2010;Whitelock et al, 2013;Perez-Gonzalez et al, 2017;Anderson et al, 2019), and two in South Africa (Phasha, 2010;Walker-Williams et al, 2012). One study each was from Australia (Vilencia et al, 2013), Bangladesh (Kaiser and Sinanan, 2020), Brazil (Pessoa et al, 2017), India (George and Bance, 2019), Israel (Kaye-Tzadok and Davidson-Ard, 2016),...…”