Does Forgiveness Affect Marital Satisfaction?

Şahan, Birsen

doi:10.37898/spc.2021.6.3.146

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 52 publications

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“…One such maintenance strategy might be marital forgiveness (Ogolsky et al, 2017), a process of prosocial shift following an incident in which a person has been treated unjustly by a spouse (Allemand et al, 2007; Fincham and Beach, 2002; McNulty, 2008). Studies have shown that unforgiveness has a detrimental effect on marital quality (Stafford et al, 2014; Şahan, 2021), whereas the spouses’ ability to move past transgressions is critical to stability, adjustment and satisfaction in marriage (Ghiurca and Vintila, 2019; Gordon and Baucom, 2003; Gordon et al, 2000; He et al, 2018; McDonald et al, 2018; Osei-Tutu et al, 2019; Shola, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgiveness in Marriage: From Incidents to Marital Satisfaction

Kaleta

Jaśkiewicz

2023

Journal of Family Issues

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Although marital forgiveness has been found to increase marital satisfaction, no research to date has examined the actual mechanism. This could derive from the ABCM model of marital satisfaction (Hall, 2021), in which disposition to forgive is understood as one of the marriage maintenance strategies contributing to spousal happiness. In two cross-sectional studies, we examined the association between marital forgiveness and satisfaction. We also tested a model in which dispositional forgiveness mediates the link between forgiveness of a particular marital incident and satisfaction with spousal relationship, moderated by transgression severity and apology. The Marital Offence-Specific Forgiveness Scale, the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and measures of marital satisfaction were used. Positive main effects between forgiveness and multidimensional marital satisfaction emerged. Moderated mediation revealed the mediation effect of dispositional forgiveness, which did not depend on the level of the moderators (severity and apology).

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