Could Forgiveness Become a Public Health Resource? Experts Examine Complexities and Possibilities

Could Forgiveness Become a Public-Health Resource? Scientists Say the Answer Is Complicated

Forgiveness may be more than a private emotional experience: it could represent a population-level resource linked to mental health and human flourishing, according to an interdisciplinary analysis published in SSM – Mental Health. But the authors stress that any public-health approach must avoid turning forgiveness into a compulsory treatment, a substitute for justice, or a simplistic prescription for people living through abuse and trauma. Their article, written in response to commentaries by philosopher T. L. Lemon and public-health researcher A. C. Tsai, examines what it would mean to study forgiveness scientifically while preserving its moral, spiritual, relational and cultural complexity.

The discussion follows earlier research that used longitudinal data from a national panel in New Zealand to model hypothetical “forgiveness shift” scenarios. In that work, the researchers estimated how multidimensional well-being might change if people’s levels of forgivingness were different. Such scenarios are not clinical trials and do not show that a society can simply increase forgiveness by a predetermined amount. Instead, they are epidemiological thought experiments: statistical models designed to ask what population health might look like under a specified change in a psychosocial exposure. The new article argues that these estimates can stimulate useful public-health questions, but only if researchers are precise about what forgiveness means and cautious about translating modelled effects into policy.

At the heart of the debate is a deceptively difficult question: what counts as forgiveness? Many people understand it as an internal shift in which resentment, anger or ill-will toward an offender is replaced by benevolence or goodwill. Others see it as inseparable from social processes, including acknowledgement of harm, accountability, apology, restitution, reconciliation and repair. The authors accept that forgiveness is often socially embedded, but argue that it should not be defined so narrowly that it becomes impossible when an offender refuses to apologize, cannot be contacted or has died. A victim may recognize the injury and decide to relinquish hostility even when the person responsible never acknowledges what happened. In this view, relationships and social conditions can shape, enable or obstruct forgiveness without being mandatory components of the act itself.

That distinction is clinically and ethically important. Forgiveness is not the same as excusing wrongdoing, minimizing harm, restoring trust or ending boundaries. A person can forgive while still recognizing that an offense was serious, maintaining distance from an unsafe individual or seeking legal and social accountability. Conversely, reconciliation generally requires participation from more than one person, while forgiveness can occur unilaterally. The authors point to established approaches such as the REACH Forgiveness model, whose first step is to recall the hurt rather than deny it. Confronting the injury is intended to prevent forgiveness from becoming emotional suppression or a demand to pretend that nothing happened. A sincere apology can help the process, but the analysis warns against making an offender’s response a universal prerequisite.

Measuring forgiveness across entire populations creates another scientific problem. Quantitative researchers typically rely on questionnaires, sometimes containing only a few items, to estimate a complex psychological disposition. A brief scale cannot capture every fluctuation in resentment, empathy, moral reasoning, spirituality, perceived injustice or relationship dynamics. Forgiveness may unfold over months or years, with feelings changing as people reinterpret an event or encounter new information. A single survey response therefore functions as an indicator, not a complete representation of lived experience. The researchers compare this challenge with the measurement of other “thick” psychosocial concepts, such as love, hope and gratitude: each can be studied numerically, but no instrument fully contains the phenomenon it attempts to describe.

That does not make population research useless. Short measures can reveal how forgivingness is distributed across demographic groups, how it changes over time and whether it is associated with outcomes such as psychological well-being. They can also help identify groups that might benefit from voluntary resources. In the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, the authors argue, a three-item measure appears to track a broad process of replacing ill-will with goodwill across different transgressions. Yet such findings should be interpreted as approximations. Stronger conclusions require triangulation, in which survey results are examined alongside randomized trials, longitudinal studies, qualitative interviews and implementation research. Combining methods can show not only whether forgiveness is associated with better outcomes, but also how people understand it and which forms of support are acceptable in different communities.

The analysis also addresses the mechanisms through which forgiveness interventions might work. Unlike a drug with a defined dose and molecular target, a forgiveness program may contain several overlapping ingredients: recalling the offense, reducing rumination, developing empathy, changing interpretations of the offender, deciding to behave differently and engaging in religious or philosophical reflection. Previous intervention research suggests that different programs often share core elements and can produce broadly comparable effects, raising the possibility of common psychological pathways. But the same program may work through different routes for different people. One participant may benefit mainly from processing resentment, another from empathy, and another from a deliberate decision to wish the offender well. This heterogeneity does not necessarily undermine causal effects; it reflects the fact that complex psychosocial interventions can generate change through multiple interacting processes.

This flexibility may make forgiveness interventions adaptable, but it also complicates the idea of scaling them up. Workbooks, online programs, classroom lessons, public campaigns and manualized psychotherapies can reach many people at relatively low cost. Yet reach is not the same as moral or character formation. The authors respond that psychologically informed interventions need not be shallow: models developed around forgiveness as a moral virtue can serve as structured entry points for sustained reflection and practice. The self-directed REACH workbook, for example, includes self-examination, empathy-building, repeated practice and an “altruistic gift of forgiveness” exercise intended to encourage willing the good of an offender. A brief intervention may therefore be a starting point for a longer process rather than a promise of instant emotional relief.

Community delivery could be crucial to making such efforts meaningful rather than culturally imposed. A forgiveness campaign in a Colombian university invited participants to engage through journaling, videos, webinars, experiential exercises and a self-directed workbook, allowing people to choose among several forms of participation. The authors envision similar programs working with trusted educators, mental-health professionals, faith leaders and community organizations. These “force multipliers” could adapt materials to local traditions and recognize when a particular exercise is inappropriate. Rather than replacing existing religious, moral, educational or restorative practices, external resources could supplement them. A pluralistic strategy might combine backward-looking support for unresolved interpersonal injuries with forward-looking education designed to cultivate empathy, emotional regulation and forgiving dispositions.

The strongest warning in the article concerns situations involving power imbalances, coercion, abuse or ongoing danger. Encouraging a survivor to forgive prematurely can shift responsibility away from an offender, weaken protective boundaries or imply that healing requires reconciliation. In such settings, agency, safety, justice and restitution must come first. The authors therefore describe forgiveness resources as voluntary and context-sensitive, not as universal interventions to be imposed by governments, clinicians, institutions or religious communities. They also emphasize that forgiveness is only one possible response to wrongdoing. Public-health strategies should leave room for accountability, repair, redemption, reconciliation and justified non-reconciliation. The broader promise of forgiveness research, they conclude, lies not in making everyone forgive, but in expanding informed access to diverse resources that people can choose—or decline—in ways consistent with their values, circumstances and safety.